Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 8.djvu/308

294 ?EJ)BRAIi BEPOBTEBf: �Now it is quite clear, to my mind, that the supreme court of Wis- consin have not gone so far as the learned cpunsel for the city con- tends that it has. The point there deoided was that the legislature could not, constitutionally, confer upon a , municipal corporation authority to contract debts, without limit as to amount, or with- out any other restriction as to purposes than the judgment of a common council, sustained by amajority of voters, that the common interest of the : municipality will be thereby promoted and secured. The court held that "such unlimited power of taxation, such un- restrained ability to contract corporate indebtedness, embracing, as it did, purposes confessedly non-municipal, was inoonsistent with the object and design of imposiug upon the legislature the duty of re- stricting municipal powers "so as to prevent abuses in assessments and taxation, and in contracting debts. " �That decision by no means justifies the conclusion that the legisla- ture may not authorize a municipal subscription to the capital stock of one designated railroad company, without limit, in one sense, as to amount, but yet to be made only after and in acoordanee with a formai written proposition by the company, setting forth as well the amount desired to be subscribed as the terms of the subscriptions, ard also after the approval of such proposition by a majority of legal votes cast at an election oalled and held to pass upon that specifie proposition. �In the act of March 21, 1&71, the purpoae of the subscription therein authorized was distinotly stated, viz. : to aid in the construction of a railroad in which the city of Pond du Lac had a business or com- mercial interest; whereas, the charter of the city of Kenosha did not limit taxation and indebtedness to municipal purposes, This differ- ence between the present case and that case is very material. Con- sequently I do not feel authorized, by anything involved or decided in Foster v. Kenosha, to hold that the legislature of Wisconsin, in pass- ing the act of 1S71, transcended the limita prescribed by the fonda- mental law of the state. Nor does the subsequent case of Flsk v. City of Kenosha condemn the act of 1871 as unconstitutional. That case involved la construction of the same section of the charter of Kenosha as the one referred to in Foster v. Kenosha, and the court does nothing more than affirm its previous ruling. �My attention has been called by counsel for the complainant to the recent case of Bound v. Wis. Cent. II. Go., etc., 45 Wis. 560. That was also a case of subscription by a town to the capital stock of a railroad company. The act under which the subscription was mada ��� �