ments of benefits and damages by this act; and like proceedings shall be had therein as in other cases of assessment of benefits and damages, provided by this act. The affidavit of any of the commissioners, or any other creditable person, of the posting and mailing thereof affixed to a copy of said notice shall be sufficient evidence of the posting and mailing of said notices, and the certificate of the publisher of the newspaper in which the said notice was published, shall be sufficient evidence of the publication of such notice. Upon confirmation of said special report by the court, it shall be the duty of the court to declare all the lands found to be affected by the work proposed by said special report, to be organized into a sub-district, and all assessments received and collected in such sub-district, for the work of such sub-district, shall be kept as a separate fund belonging to such sub-district, and said commissioners shall have the power if necessary to issue bonds against any assessment or assessments in said sub-district in the same manner as bonds are issued in original districts. The commissioners of the principal district shall be exofficio commissioners of the sub-district. Any lands lying outside of any sub-district as organized, the owner or owners of which shall thereafter make connection with any ditch or drain within any sub-district, or whose lands are or will be benefited by the work of such sub-district, shall be deemed to have made voluntary application to be included in such sub-district, and thereupon the commissioners shall make complaint as provided in section fifty-eight (58) of this act as to lands lying outside of a drainage district as organized, and like proceedings shall be had thereon as in cases of complaints made under said section fifty-eight (58).”

The facts as they appear from the record are, that Kiser creek flows from the east and empties into the main channel of the Sny Island Levee Drainage District; that the sub-district as organized is designed to afford additional

drainage to the lands of the Sny Island Levee Drainage District tributary to Kiser creek; that the application filed with the drainage commissioners of the Sny Island Levee Drainage District for the establishment of said sub-district was signed by twenty-three land owners, who owned a majority, in amount, of the lands of the sub-district; that the commissioners employed an engineer, went upon the lands of the sub-district, and prepared and filed a report in the county court of Pike county recommending the establishment of the sub-district, and that the proper statutory notices were given to the land owners; that in the county court a number of the land owners who had signed the application to the commissioners for the establishment of said sub-district withdrew their names from the application by leave of the county court and other names were added to the application; that the court found, upon the final hearing, the total number of adult land owners in the district to be fifty-nine, of whom eighteen had signed the application, who owned a major part of the lands in the sub-district, and an order was entered by the county court establishing the sub-district.

Three grounds of reversal are urged in this court: First, the court erred in establishing the sub-district, embracing the lands of others than those who signed the application and those across whose lands it was proposed to construct the work, upon an application signed by less than one-third of the adult land owners of the sub-district owning a major part of the lands of the sub-district; second, the court erred in establishing the sub-district, which included lands embraced in another sub-district established for the same purpose and under the same statute; third, the court erred in denying the motion of the plaintiffs in error, made upon the trial, for a rule upon the commissioners to file an itemized account, under the provisions of section 37 of the Levee act, of their receipts and expenditures made in the Sny Island Levee Drainage District.

The commissioners of the Sny Island Levee Drainage District, upon the application of certain land owners owning land upon Kiser creek, in 1906 recommended to the county court of Pike county the establishment of a subdrainage district within the boundaries of the Sny Island Levee Drainage District containing 9637 acres of the lands of said Sny Island Levee Drainage District, and the court in that year established said sub-district under the provisions of section 59 of the Levee act as then in force, and the said sub-district, as established, contained the lands of land owners who had not signed the application for the establishment of the sub-district and whose lands were not crossed by the drains and ditches of the proposed subdistrict. This court, in the case of Dewell v. Sny Island Drainage District, 232 Ill. 215, upon a writ of error sued out to review the judgment of the circuit court of Pike county rendered in a common law certiorari proceeding brought in that court to review the record of the county court establishing said sub-district and sustaining the establishment of said sub-district, held that while section 59 of the Levee act as then in force was constitutional for the purposes intended to be covered by its provisions, said section did not authorize the organization of a sub-drainage district which included the lands of land owners who had not signed the application to the commissioners for the establishment of the sub-district and whose lands were not crossed by the drains and ditches of the proposed subdistrict, and reversed the judgment of the circuit court and remanded the cause to that court, with directions to enter an order quashing the proceedings establishing said subdistrict in so far as it was attempted to include within the sub-district any lands except those of the persons who signed the application asking that the sub-district be established and those lands over which the proposed drains and ditches of the sub-district were to be constructed. No remanding order of the judgment disposing of the writ of

error by this court in that case was ever filed in the circuit court of Pike county, but the sub-district was abandoned by the commissioners of the Sny Island Levee Drainage District and upon the amendment of section 59 of the Levee act the sub-district here involved was sought to be organized, and the main question here to be determined is, can a sub-district be established, under the provisions of section 59 of the Levee act as now in force, which shall include the lands of persons who have not applied to have a sub-district established and over whose lands the proposed drains and ditches of the sub-district do not pass, except upon an application to the commissioners signed by a majority, in number, of the adult land owners in such locality owning, in the aggregate, more than one-third of the lands affected, or by the adult land owners of a major part of the land in such locality who constitute one-third or more of the owners of the land affected?

It is apparent that when the application was presented to the commissioners it was the view of the applicants that it was necessary that the application for the establishment of the sub-district should be signed by at least one-third of the adult land owners in the locality of the proposed subdistrict who owned a major part of the land, and that after the county court had permitted a sufficient number of the signers of the application to withdraw their names from the application, so that one-third of the adult land owners signing said application who owned a major part of the lands of the sub-district did not remain upon the application, they then took the position, which the county court also adopted, that it was not necessary to have to the application the signatures of one-third of the adult land owners who owned a major part of the lands of the subdistrict, to authorize the establishment of the sub-district, but that the sub-district might be lawfully established upon the application of "some owner or owners" of land located within the boundaries of the proposed sub-district. It was

held by this court in the Dewell case that section 59, prior to its amendment, authorized one or more land owner or owners to apply for the establishment of a sub-drainage district for the more proper drainage of his or their lands, but that he or they could not force other lands into the proposed sub-district without the consent of their owners. unless the proposed drains and ditches of the sub-district crossed such lands.

We are of the opinion, therefore, that when section 59 was re-written and re-adopted as an amendment to the Levee act, the only material change made in its provisions was to provide a method whereby, upon the application of a majority of the adult land owners owning one-third of the lands, or upon the application of one-third of the adult land owners owning a major part of the lands, a subdistrict might be established which should include all the lands of the sub-district, whether all the land owners were willing or not. To construe the amended section so as to permit the establishment of a sub-district which should include all the lands in the proposed sub-district upon the application of some owner or owners of land in the subdistrict, would permit one land owner in the territory tributary to Kiser creek to cause the establishment of a subdistrict which should include all the lands drained by that creek, against the protest and desire of all the other land owners within the boundaries of the proposed sub-district, which would, we think, be so unreasonable a construction of section 59, as amended, that it should not be adopted unless the language of the section is so clear and unequivocal that no other construction could be placed upon it. The defect in the section sought to be cured was that which prevented the establishment of a sub-district without the consent of all land owners in the sub-district and of such as would voluntarily ask for its establishment or over whose lands the drains or ditches of the proposed sub-district passed, and it was not its purpose to give to a single land