By the seventeenth section of the Constitution, the General Assembly are directed to cause compleat lists of the taxable inhabitants in the city and each county in the Commonwealth respectively, to be taken and returned to them every seventh year, from the year 1778, in order to regulate and apportion upon those lists the number of representatives to be chosen for the ensuing period. As this is a matter of importance, and falls upon the present year, it appears to us that it would be well to attend to it as soon as possible. By the present criminal laws fines are a part of the punishment for a variety of offences; applications are continually made to us by the offenders for remission of such fines; and these applications are recommended by the Magistrates, on the sole consideration that the criminals being poor and unable to pay, become, while detained in prison, a charge to the public; as this is generally the case, the imposition of fines is rendered ineffectual as a punishment, and the satisfaction due by the laws to the community from the offenders, is not made. We, therefore, offer it for your consideration, whether means may not be found to oblige them to pay by labor what they are unable to pay in money, and whether this would not tend more to the prevention of offences, those especially which are committed thro’ a vicious dislike of labor. In the General Reform of our penal laws, necessary in itself, and required by the thirty-eighth section of the Constitution, this particular will properly come before you.

Easy communication between the different parts of the State, is one of the means that contribute to its wealth and prosperity. Our roads are generally bad, whereby the conveyance of our produce and merchandize to market is often obstructed, delayed, or rendered more expensive. If the repairing of roads was made a county charge, to be defrayed by a tax, and executed by contract, instead of being as at present an unequal burthen on the townships, we apprehend they would be kept in better order, and the public greatly benefited.

The establishment of an improved system of revenue is a matter that seems to us very necessary, and we therefore, earnestly recommend it to your consideration.

The test laws, however proper or necessary they may have been at the time and under the circumstances in which they were made, are at present, on various accounts, the cause of much uneasiness in the State. We are, therefore, of opinion that it is now expedient to revise them.

We should have sooner laid some of these matters before your Honorable House, but that we were unwilling to withdraw your attention from the important points recommended to you by Congress