OCR Text |
Show A New District. The petition, herewith published, explains itself. Persons desirous to sign it may do so by calling at the LEADER office; or may attach their names to the copies which will be sent to the principal settlements of Cache and Rich counties. To the Excellency the Governor and the legislative Assembly of Utah Territory; your petitioners would respectably represent the grievance under which the people of the northern portion of said Territory are laboring and respectfully pray for redress. 1.-- The nine counties constitute the Third Judicial District, as shown by the treasurer s report of 1878 list for taxation $18,642,000 of the $ [unreadable], the entire property of the Territory, or 79 per cent, of all the taxable property of the entire people of the Territory. We have not the statistics of the population and litigation, but it is safe to be assumed that these counties have an equal percent of these, while they have only thirty-three and one-third per cent of court facilities. 2. These nine counties have within their borders 5-6 of the entire railroad system of the Territory some six hundred miles. 3.-- Salt Lake City is situated about one hundred and twenty miles from the northern boundary of the district, while it is only about twenty miles from the southern boundary. 4. The exchange of each witness may be safely set down to $14 to the party summoning him, from the counties of Rich and Cache and a large portion of Morgan and Box Elder to testify in the District Court. 5. This extraordinary expense virtually closes the courts to honest parties, while it gives the power to the unscrupulous to exact unjust terms from the honest who could not afford to enter into such ???? ltigation; and especially so as the court s calendar is much crowded, rendering the time of trial very uncertain, and often producing a delay of years. 6. That the five counties of Rich, Morgan, Weber, Box Elder and Cache in 1870, included for taxation, $1,617,188 or equal to 8 percent of the entire taxable property of the Territory and no doubt then had as great a per cent of population, commerce, and litigation and have since increased in population, wealth and commerce at a greater per cent than other portions of the Territory. 7. That these counties contain within their borders over fifty per cent, of all the railroads of the territory. 8. The county seats of four of these counties, to wit, Morgan, Weber, Box Elder and Cache, are situated on these railroads and are in daily connection with each other, and especially with Ogden, the county seat of Weber. 9. Weber County in the year of 1876, was and still is the second wealthiest county in the territory, and Ogden its seat of justice, is the second city in population, wealth and commercial importance, now having a population now some 7,000 and is situated at the junction of the four great commercial arteries, to wit: The Union Pacific, Central Pacific, Utah and Northern, and Utah Central railroads; and it promises to be at no very distant day, the first city in commercial importance in the Territory. 10. As these five counties contain more wealth and population than the other eleven counties of the Territory, not embraced in the 3rd Judicial District some consideration and relief should be given to their condition and surroundings. Wherefore, in view of these imposing facts, we ask that the necessary relief be granted, by constituting said five counties, with such others as may be deemed advisable, a judicial district, with the courts to be held at Ogden. Or if this should not be regarded as the appropriate relief, that these five counties be attached to the First Judicial District, as a sub-district with the courts thereof at Ogden, two terms each year, and that such further legislation be had as may be necessary to make the jury and other machinery of the court work harmoniously. |