Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/315

Rh and the federal judges, whose mendacity in denying the validity of the act of 1849, adopting certain of the Revised Statutes of 1843 of Iowa, popularly known as the steamboat code, was the cause of more confusion than their opposition to the location of the seat of government act, also declared to be invalid, because two of them used the Revised Statutes of Iowa of 1838, adopted by the provisional government, in their courts, instead of the later one which the legislative assembly declared to be the law.

As I have before recorded, the legislature of 1851–2, in order to secure the administration of the laws they enacted, altered the judicial districts in such a manner that Pratt's district included the greater part of the Willamette Valley. But Pratt's term expired in the autumn of 1852–3, and a new man, C. F. Train, had been appointed in his place, toward whom the democracy were not favorably inclined, simply because he was a whig appointee. As Pratt was no longer at hand, and as the business of the courts in the counties assigned to him was too great for a single judge, the legislature in 1852–3 redistricted the territory, making the 1st district, which belonged to Chief Justice Nelson, comprise the counties of Lane, Umpqua, Douglas, and Jackson; the 2d district, which would be Train's, embrace Clackamas, Marion, Yamhill, Polk, Benton, and Linn; and the 3d, or Strong's, consist of Washington, Clatsop, Clarke, Lewis, Thurston, Pierce, and Island. By this arrangement Nelson would have been compelled to remain in contact with border life during the remainder of his term had not Deady, who was then president of the council, relented so far as to procure the insertion in the act of