Martinsburgh gazette. [volume] (Martinsburgh, Va. [W. Va.]) 1810-1825, 1811-07-26
RESPECTFULLY RRpREsENTs.

se RESPECTFULLY RRpREsENTe
4 HAT your memorialists truly grateful for
the animated but unsuccessful etferts made
at the last session of your honorable body, to
produce reform in the existing system of
Chancery Jurisprudence, are impelled by
lively sense of the inadequacy of that system
to its object and the many and heavy grev-
ances to which they are subjected, by the pre-
sent situation and arrangement of their Chan
Gerry Courts, again to present the subject for
your considerations
Your memorialsts are fully sensible, that
the disappointment they have hitherto expe-
rienced in their sanguine expectations, and
respectful .solicitude upon that subject are
more properly attributable to a want of coin
cidence of opinion, in the mode Of effecting
reform, than from any insensibility in your
Honorable Body, to the indispensable incon-
veniences and privations to which they are
subjected, by the present oppressive system
They confidently hope and trust that they en-
terrain well grounded expectation, that your
Honorable Body, percciving the general and
INCREASING solcitude of your constituents: the
pressing necessity Of an immediate and effec-
tive reform, regardless of local considerations
and with an eye only to the general good OF
the community will mature such division
and new organization of our Chancery Courts,
as will most effectually remedy existing evils
and Inconvenience, and afford greater facili-
ty to the future attainment of justice
Your memorialists might be considered as
unnecessarily trespassing upon the time and
attention of your Honorable Body by minute
ly detailing the inconvenience, delays, and
enormous expense resulting from the present
situation and arrangement of the Courts of
Chancery. They will content themselves
with presenting to your view the most promi-
nent and oppressive evils to which they are
subjected: evils, it is true, to which their
fellow-citizens residing west of the Blue Ridge
are more particularly exposed and from
which those residing in the lower part of the
State, and in the vicinity of Staunton, are in
a great measure exempt. The Chancery Dis
trict west of the Blue Ridge embraces ter
ritory of several hundred miles, from east to
west, and of greater extent from north to
south, including population equal to one
third of the entire population of the state
The rugged and mountainous face of the coun-
try presenting obstacles to easy and rapid in
tercourse, inconceivable to our fellow-citi2ens
of the low country, by whom they have ne
yer been encountered-The people wealthy,
enterprising and trading-all fruitful sources
of litigation, involving matters of contract
and the rights of property. Yet this extern
sive and populous tract of country, under all
the circumstances before enumerated, is en-
braced within the territorial jurisdiction of
single Court of Chancery, exclusive OF ju-
risdiction in the County Courts, In many res
poets limited in theory, and in fact obsolete in
practice Neither is it matter of wonder or
censure, that the County Courts, in some in
stances entirely and in most instances, gene
rally, have ceased, practically, to exercise
this Jurisdiction. The reasons why they hi
therto have not, and never can be expected
usefully to discharge this attribute of their
judicial character must be too obvious to your
Honorable Body, to require detail 1t must
be equally obvious particularly with the aid
of ten years experience, that single Court of
Chancery jurisdiction, has been, and must
continue to be, inadequate to the full admins
tration of Justice, west of the Blue Ridge.
Even if the Legislature of Virginia, con-
spicuous for its observance of republican prin-
riples, and the rights of the citizens, could
ever be unmindful of that axiom in political
That justice ought to be speedily
administered to all at least possible expense
your memorialists in confirmation of their
are warranted in saying, that not
the many obstacles to the prose-
cution of claims in the ChaRcery Court at