68 FIRST COUNTY PARK SYSTEM 
well known; a man of public spirit; a man of intelligence, 
one who knows the deficiencies of the city of Newark as 
compared with the improvements in other cities; and, hav- 
ing regard to his judgment and to the interest he has taken 
in this public park project, and the interest he uniformly 
exhibits in all public affairs, I have selected for that place 
Franklin Murphy. 
“Giving the subject the most anxious consideration— 
more than I have given to any duty of this kind since I 
have been called upon to perform public duties—I think the 
commission that I have constituted will be as good as any 
commission that I could possibly select.” 
I have never doubted Judge Depue’s.sincerity in dealing 
as he did with the taxation-representation phase of the 
question, or that it was made to appear to him as desirable 
that the sectional or local representation principle should 
then be injected into the enterprise—although this very 
principle of sectionalism, as I have already indicated, occa- 
sioned the wreckage of the park enterprise for Newark in 
1867-72; was largely responsible for the failure to mater- 
ialize of the commendable efforts of the committee of the 
Newark Board of trade in the same direction in 1892; has 
occasioned the failure of many public park enterprises all 
over the country ; and was the very thing that the first com- 
mission had made every effort to prevent, and which, hav- 
ing been prevented, was in reality one of the essential ele- 
ments in the immediate indorsement of its plan by the pub- 
lic and the Legislature. 
REASONS FOR COURT'S ACTION. 
Nor do I doubt that it had been forcibly represented to 
the judge that the better plan would be to reverse the divi- 
sional lines of representation from three from the county at 
large, as he had endeavored to establish in selecting the first 
commission, and give the majority in the board to Newark, 
as the portion of the county paying the larger proportion of 
the county tax. Nor do I believe there is the slightest reason 
