Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 3).pdf/302

complete; and the argument from these premises is that District No. 22, and not the defendant, is at present liable for these bonds. The section of the statute on which the claim rests is § 136. It provides as follows: “The adoption of the system herein provided, and the passage and approval of this act, shall not have the effect to discontinue, abolish, and render null such school districts or their organization as they may now exist in any county, but they shall continue to exist, and their officers to act as such, in law and fact, until the school township organization is complete, so far as it includes any particular district or districts, or the larger part of any particular district. And such township organization shall not be deemed complete, nor such districts so cease to exist, and their officers to act as such, until all matters between the district and the township are adjusted, and the property delivered, funds paid over, and an adjustment is reached for the equalization of taxes and property between the districts which enter into the school township, so far as such taxes and property remain permanent in houses, sites, furniture, and other parts of houses and grounds.” The next two sections prescribe the procedure by which the equalization of taxes is to be determined, and the rules which are to govern such equalization. Now, it is quite clear to our mind that § 136 was incorporated in the statute merely to keep the old districts alive, for the purpose of adjusting their rights among themselves, so that taxpayers living in each portion of the new township which formerly constituted a school district should not pay more of the aggregate of the old indebtedness of the several districts embraced in the township than would be equitable, considering the rights of the taxpayers of the other districts, so included, to the same treatment. The school boards of the several old districts constituted, with the county superintendent, a body to adjust these matters, and it was necessary to keep the districts alive for this special purpose after the organization of the township. The legislature intended to work an immediate, radical revolution in the school system for the whole territory. We do not believe that they contemplated that, while