PETITION
To the Honorable the Legislature of the State of California:
The memorial of the undersigned, Judges and Members of the Bar of the City and County of San Francisco respectfully shows:
That a large portion of the litigation of the State of California is confined to its metropolis, and the said city and county, which has a population of one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, and constitutes a commercial, mercantile and mechanical center, containing within its local limits a Circuit and District Court of the United States, three State District Courts, a County Court, a Probate Court, a Police Court, and a Court of five Justices of the Peace, all of which tribunals are continually occupied in the determination of cases and the decision of legal rights arising in and affecting that community.
That owning to the increase, accumulation and extent of the legal interests and the litigation aforesaid, and to obtain a proper education by the Courts aforesaid, of contested rights, it has become an indispensable necessity, as well as for the uses of the bench, as of the bar, and the municipal officers of the said city and county, and the promotion of the public interests, that a law library should exist therein, to which the its legal and municipal officers can have access, at all times, for the purpose of private examination of authorities, and their production, when requisite, in the said courts.
That the private law libraries within said city and county are only serviceable to their respective owners, and for obvious reasons, unavailable for public uses.
That there and now exists in said city and county and association for or society, duly incorporated under the name of the San Francisco Law Library, which has already secured, and now possesses, a collection of about two thousand volumes of legal treaties and reports, amounting in value to about ten thousand dollars , which it has long been hoped would, through its growth and increase, subserved the purposes sought to be obtained by this memorial; but, unfortunately, the result has proved that said institution (depending, as it does, for its support and development upon private enterprise), cannot be sustained from individual contributions, and its Trustees and stockholders have, therefore, determined to contribute the said collection to such incorporation as your honorable body may create for the establishment of a permanent and public law library in the said city and county, framed substantially upon the principles and methods set forth in the proposed Act of the Legislature, herewith presented to your honorable body, and such as in solicited by this memorial.
Your memorialists, therefore, pray that your honorable body will pass the Act proposed, with such modifications, if any, as to your wisdom shall seem meet, at an early date, and those provided for a great in consistently increasing public want.
And memorialists will ever pray, etc.
Lorenzo Sawyer,
John T. Doyle,
Ogden Hoffman,
Samuel H. Dwinelle,
E.D. Sawyer,
R. R. Provines,
Selden S. Wright,
E. W. McKinstry,
O. C. Pratt,
J. McM. Shafter,
William Barber,
H. D. Scripture,
John S. Bugbee,
Wilson & Crittenden,
S. Heydenfeldt,
W. W. Cope,
Emmitt & Gallagher,
Hayes, Stanly & Hayes,
Quint & Hardy,
Winans & Belknap,
Jarboe & Harrison,
Daniel Rogers,
James Roger Booth,
J. B. Crockett,
James C. Pennie,
George Leviston,
Oscar T. Shuck,
T. W. Taliaferro,
P. B. Ladd,
Thomas H. Selby,
J. N. Hoge,
McAllister & Bergin,
Campbell, Fox & Campbell,
Hambleton & Gordon,
H. S. Brown,
Henry E. Highton,
William H. L. Barnes,
Samuel J. Clarke,
Milton Andros,
S. F. & S. Reynolds,
Delos Lake,
D. P. Barstow,
Bishop & Gerald,
R. C. Rogers,
N. J. Potier,
J. W. Harding,
H. F. Crane,
E. Cook,
Edw. F. McCarthy,
Wm. W. Chipman,
Eugene Lies,
James D. Thornton,
John J. Williams,
Marcus P. Wiggin,
William Hale,
M. A. Edmonds,
Porter & Holladay,
Thomas J. Drum,
Jabish Clement,
R. P. Clement,
Gaben D. Hall,
H. Cook,
James C. Zabriskie,
H. Rix,
E. B. Drake,
Edw. C. Batchelor,
W. H. Aiken,
J. M. Seawell,
John G. Roche,
F. C. M. Du Brutz,
James McCabe,
John B. Dilley,
Charles E. Wilson,
T. K. Wilson,
Earl Bartlett,
N. B. Mulville,
J. D. Thomson,
M. C. Hassett,
J. Mee,
J. A. Woodson,
Henry B. Janes,
William Higby,
J. F. Cowdery,
H. M. Hastings,
D. O. Kelly,
Clarence S. Townsend,
G. F. & Wm. H. Sharp,
John Hunt, Jr.,
F. P. Dann,
Grey & Brandon,
Alexander Campbell,
Calhoun Benham,
John B. Felton,
Sidney V. Smith,
Pringle & Pringle,
Sharp and Lloyd,
James B. Townsend,
George & Loughborough,
McCullough & Boyd,
Frederick A.Sawyer,
James C. Cary,
Barstow, Stetson & Houghton,
Sharpstein & Hastings,
Cowles & Drown,
Robert F. Morrison,
F. A. Fabens,
Byrne & Freelon,
George W. Tyler,
Wm. I. Hyland,
Wm. P. Daingerfield,
M. C. Blake,
Julius C. McCeney,
W. D. Sawyer,
C. Wittram,
Wm. H. Patterson,
A. M. Crane,
E. O. F. Hastings,
Alfred Rising,
S. H. Henry,
R. A. Redman,
J. P. Dameron,
William M. Pierson,
C. H. Parker,
Presley Denny,
M. Bergin,
P. G. Buchan,
R. Thompson,
John L. Love,
William H. McGrew,
J. W. Carter,
William Leviston,
R. G. Rowley,
Joseph Vandor,
R. S. Clyde,
James F. Hubbard,
C. Burbank,
Alfred Rix,
Theodore H. Hittle,
M. G. Cobb,
James M. Taylor,
George A. Nourse,
A. Williams,
J. C. Bates,
C. F. Craddock,
W. W. Stow,
T. J. Crowley.