Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 3).pdf/293

district has been formed. The record so kept by the county superintendant shows the following entry: “District No. 22, organized October 24th, 1881, and includes the following described territory: South half of sections 19, 20, 21, 22, and 23, and all of sections 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, and 35, in township 133, range 49, and one-half of section 5, in township 132, range 49, and sections 24, 25, and 36, township 133, range 50.” The statute does not declare that furnishing the county commissioners with a written description of the boundaries, and the filing thereof in the office of the register of deeds, are conditions precedent to the existence of the district. Quite the contrary. The statute refers to the district as a corporation already formed before the doing of these acts. It does not withhold corporate life until the description is furnished and filed. It merely provides that the district shall not be entitled to proceed with its organization by the election of school officers before these acts are performed. The corporation exists; the district officers exist; but no election of officers*can be held until after certain acts are performed. This is the plain reading of the statute. Said the court in School Directors of Union School Dist. No. 4 v. School Directors of New Union School Dist. No. 2, (Ill. Sup.) 28 N. E. Rep. 49, at page 52: “And the failure of the township trustees to file with the county a map showing the lands embraced in the new district will not have the effect to destroy its corporate existence, or to prevent the directors of a new district from levying taxes for school purposes therein;” citing School Directors of Dist. No. 5 v. School Directors of Dist. No. 10, 73 Ill. 250. A municipal corporation may have life, although there are no officers in office. No claim is made that the officers who in fact signed the bonds and coupons were not at least de facto officers of the district, provided there was a legal organization thereof. Nor could it be successfully contended that such officers were not at least de facto officers, there having been an attempt to comply with the law requiring the furnishing and filing of the description before officers should be elected, and the officers being in actual possession of their