But it has been held by the Supreme Court of Massachusetts that towns might be authorized by the legislature to raise moneys by taxation for the purpose of refunding sums contributed by individuals to a common fund, in order to fill the quota of such towns under a call of the President, notwithstanding such moneys. might have been contributed without promise or expectation of reimbursement. The court were of opinion that such contribu called the Halifax Bounty Association, which levied an assessment of thirty dollars on each person liable to military duty in the township, and solicited contributions from others. Afterwards, an act was passed by the legislature, with a preamble reciting that certain citizens of Halifax township, associated as the Halifax Bounty Association, for freeing the said township from the late drafts, advanced moneys, which were expended in paying bounties to volunteers to fill the quota of the township. The act then authorized and required the school directors to borrow such sums of money as would fully reimburse the said Halifax Bounty Association for moneys advanced to free said township from the draft, and then further authorized the school directors to levy and collect a tax to repay the sums borrowed. The court say: "We are bound to regard the statute as an authority to reimburse what was intended by the Association as advances made to the township with the intent or understanding to be reimbursed or returned to those contributing. This was the light in which the learned judge below regarded the terms used; and unless this appears in support of the present levy by the school directors, they are acting without authority. But the learned judge, if I properly comprehend his meaning, did not give sufficient importance to these terms, and hence, I apprehend, he fell into error. He does not seem to have considered it essential whether the Association paid its money voluntarily in aid of its own members, or expressly to aid the township in saving its people from a draft, with the understanding that it was advanced in the character of a loan if the legislature chose to direct its repayment, and the school directors chose to act on the authority conferred. This we cannot agree to. Such an enactment would not be legislation at all. It would be in the nature of judicial action, it is true; but wanting the justice of notice to the parties to be affected by the hearing, trial, and all that gives sanction and force to regular judicial proceedings, it would much more resemble an imperial rescript than constitutional legislation: first, in declaring an obligation where none was created or previously existed; and next, in decreeing payment by directing the money or property of the people to be sequestered to make the payment. The legislature can exercise no such despotic functions; and as it is not apparent in the act that they attempted to do so, we are not to presume that they did. They evidently intended the advancements to be reimbursed to be only such as were made on the faith that they were to be returned." See also Crowell v. Hopkinton, 45 N. H. 9; Miller v. Grandy, 13 Mich. 540; Pease v. Chicago, 21 Ill. 508. In Freeland v. Hastings, 10 Allen, 570, it was held that the legislature could not empower towns to raise money by taxation for the purpose of refunding what had been paid by individuals for substitutes in military service. tions might well be considered as advancements to a public purpose, and, being such, the legislature might well recognize the obligation and provide for its discharge.1 1 Freeland v. Hastings, 10 Allen, 585. The court, after considering the general subject of the power to authorize the towns to raise money by tax for the payment of bounties to volunteers, proceed to say: "It would seem to follow as a necessary consequence, that not only was the payment of bounties by the commonwealth, and by cities and towns, for the purpose of procuring volunteers, a proper and legitimate object of expenditure of public money, raised or to be raised by taxation, but also that money contributed voluntarily by individuals to raise a fund for the same purpose may well have been considered by the legislature as an advancement of money for a public object. When in the summer of 1864 it became necessary to furnish a large additional number of soldiers to the army of the United States by filling the quotas allotted to the several cities and towns, a public exigency had arisen for which no adequate provision had been made by the legislature. The alternative was presented to the people of the Commonwealth of procuring volunteers to enlist by the payment of bounties, or of submitting to the evils and hardships attendant upon an attempt to recruit the army by a draft. In most if not all of the cities and towns, it was deemed to be wise and expedient, and most for the interest of the inhabitants, to embrace the former branch of this alternative; and accordingly, as no authority was then vested in towns or cities to raise money by taxation or otherwise for the payment of bounties, resort was had to the method of procuring voluntary contributions to raise a fund in each town for such purpose. But these contributions, though voluntarily made, and without any legal claim on the town or city for reimbursement, or any expectation of legislative sanction, were nevertheless given in aid of the performance of a public duty, which devolved on the city or town, and for which it would have been competent for the legislature, in anticipation of the exigency, to authorize money to be raised, by taxation or otherwise, on the credit of a town or city. In this view the question as to the validity of the statute resolves itself into this: whether it was competent for the legislature to authorize towns and cities to repay to individuals money which, in the opinion of the legislature, they had advanced in a pressing public exigency to enable a town or city to discharge a duty which was legally devolved upon it, and which it could not have performed without such adventitious aid. Upon the best consideration which we have been able to give the subject, we can see no legal or constitutional objection to the action of the legislature. We are not called upon to determine the wisdom or expediency of the act. Confining ourselves to the question whether the legislature have transcended their authority in passing it, we are of opinion that no private right is invaded, and no constitutional barrier overstepped, in giving authority to cities and towns to raise money by taxation to reimburse individuals for contributions made in aid of an object of a public or municipal nature; or, in other words, that as it is competent for the legislature to authorize the imposition of taxes to raise money to be expended for a public purpose, so it is competent for them to sanction an expenditure already made for a like object, and to give authority for its repayment by means of taxation. If these views are correct, then Whether the legislature has power, against the will of a municipal corporation, to compel its citizens to assume an obligation, and to discharge it by taxation, where the obligation is one which it would not fall within the ordinary functions of municipal government to enter into, is a question which, if it is to be decided by authority, is not entirely free from difficulty. There are cases which deny to the legislature the possession of any such power; and which claim for the municipal organizations the same exemption from compulsory burdens, outside the circle of their ordinary and legal duties, that protects the individual citizen. And even where a moral obligation may fairly be said to rest upon the municipality, it is denied, in some cases, that the legislature can convert it into a legal demand, and enforce its payment, though it is conceded that it may authorize the citizens of the municipality to assume the burden and discharge it if they choose to do so.1 it follows that the statute under consideration is not obnoxious to the objections to its validity urged by the petitioners. It cannot in any just sense be said that the legislature authorized an assessment, by means of which money could be capriciously taken from one individual or class and given to another, or that it sanctioned the appropriation of public money to the payment of claims which had no just or equitable existence. The clear and decisive answer to all such objections is, that the money which the statute authorized towns to repay by means of taxation was raised and contributed for a public object. This seems to us not only to constitute a test by which the validity of the statute is proved, but also a safe limit by which the power of the legislature to authorize taxation for repayments or reimbursements of money advanced without legislative sanction may be restrained." This case should be compared and contrasted with that of Tyson v. School Directors, 51 Penn. St. 9, given fully in a preceding note. 1 In Hasbrouck v. Milwaukee, 13 Wis. 37, it appeared that the city of Milwaukee had been authorized to issue bonds to an amount not exceeding fifty thousand dollars, to raise money to expend in the construction of a harbor in that city. The city authorities entered into a contract for that purpose, at a cost largely exceeding the limit thus fixed. Subsequent acts of the legislature extended the authority to issue bonds to such an amount as should be necessary to complete the harbor. Whether these acts had the effect to render valid the contract before entered into by the city was made a question in the court. It did not appear that the city petitioned for such subsequent acts, or had in any way expressed its assent to them. "Under these circumstances," say the court, "the question is, Can the legislature, by recognizing the existence of a previously void contract, and authorizing its discharge by the city, or in any other way, coerce the city against its will into a performance of it; or does the law require the assent of the city as well as of the legislature, in order to make the obligation binding and efficacious? "I must say that, in my opinion, the latter act, as well as the former, is necessary There are other cases, however, which seem to go to the extent of holding that municipal corporations and organizations are so completely under the legislative control, that, whatever the legislature may permit them to do, with a view to the general benefit, it may compel them to do, whether their citizens are willing or not. If, for instance, the legislature may constitutionally authorize a town or city to take stock in a railroad enterprise, for the convenience and benefit of its citizens, and on the supposition that the work, though not local in its character, will be productive of local benefits, it may also compel such action by the town or city, or oblige it to refund moneys which individuals may have advanced for the purpose. And where a State or county building is to be erected, the effect of which may be locally beneficial, the legislature, on the principle of equalizing, as far as practicable, the benefits and the burdens, may oblige the town where it is to be built to contribute to that object such sum as it shall deem just, over and above the ratable proportion as assessed upon the State or county at large.1 A con for that purpose, and that without it the obligation cannot be enforced. tract void for want of capacity in one or both of the contracting parties to enter into it is as no contract; it is as if no attempt at an agreement had ever been made. And to admit that the legislature, of its own choice, and against the wishes of either or both of the contracting parties, can give it life and vigor, is to admit that it is within the scope of legislative authority to divest settled rights of property, and to take the property of one individual or corporation and transfer it to another. It is certainly unnecessary at this day to enter into an argument, or to cite authorities, to show that under a constitutional government like ours the legislature has no such power. tract. "It is undoubtedly true that, in cases like the present, where there is a strong moral, but no legal obligation to pay, courts have often seized, and may again seize upon very slight circumstances of assent in order to give effect to the conAnd in this case, if it appeared that the city did by some authorized action procure the passage of the act, or had subsequently acquiesced in it by ratifying the contract, there would be little difficulty in the way of holding it bound by its terms. In such cases it is the contemporaneous or subsequent assent of the parties to be bound, coupled with the power or ability on their part to give such assent, which makes the contract obligatory. But the giving of such assent is a matter which depends upon their own free will. It is a voluntary act which they may do or not as they see fit, and in case they think proper to withhold it, the legislature has no power to compel it." See also Hampshire v. Franklin, 16 Mass. 83, for somewhat similar views. 1 Kirby v. Shaw, 19 Penn. St. 258. In this case, by an act of April 3, 1848, the commissioners of Bradford county were to add five hundred dollars annually, until 1857, to the usual county rates and levies of the borough of Towanda in If these cases, which are referred to in the note, are sound, the limitations which rest upon the power of the legislature to compel said county, for the purpose of defraying the expenses of erecting the courthouse and jail, then in process of erection in that borough. The act was held constitutional, on the principle of assessment of benefits. In Thomas v. Leland, 24 Wend. 67, it appeared that certain citizens of Utica had given their bond to the people of the State of New York, conditioned for the payment into the canal fund of the sum of thirty-eight thousand six hundred and fifteen dollars, the estimated difference between the cost of connecting the Chenango Canal with the Erie at Utica, instead of at Whitesborough as the canal commissioners had contemplated; and it was held within the constitutional powers of the legislature to require this sum to be assessed upon the taxable property of the city of Utica, supposed to be benefited by the canal connection. The court treat the case as "the ordinary one of local taxation to make or improve a public highway. If such an act," says Cowen, J., "be otherwise constitutional, we do not see how the circumstance that a bond had been before given securing the same money can detract from its validity. Should an individual volunteer to secure a sum of money in itself properly leviable by way of tax on a town or county, there would be nothing in the nature of such an arrangement which would preclude the legislature from resorting, by way of tax, to those who are primarily and more justly liable. Even should he pay the money, what is there in the constitution to preclude his being reimbursed by a tax?" The same general views have been acted upon in other cases, which assert the complete power of the legislature over the subject of taxation, and that it must determine what sums shall be raised, either in the State at large, or in any particular portion of the State, and also to what objects the sums so raised shall be applied. See particularly Guilford v. Supervisors of Chenango, 18 Barb. 615; Same case, 13 N. Y. 143; People v. Mitchell, 45 Barb. 208; Same case, 35 N. Y. 551; People v. Power, 25 Ill. 187; People v. Mayor, &c. of Brooklyn, 4 N. Y. 419; Slack v. Maysville and Lexington Railroad Co., 13 B. Monr. 26; Cheaney v. Hooser, 9 B. Monr. 330. See also Borough of Dunmore's Appeal, 52 Penn. St. 374. In that case it appeared that a township which was considerably indebted, had had four boroughs carved out of it. Afterwards an act was passed by which the Court of Common Pleas was directed to appoint three commissioners, for the purpose of ascertaining the indebtedness of the township, and what amount, if any, was due and owing from the boroughs, and make an equitable adjustment thereof between them all, and allowing no appeal by the boroughs from their decision. It was held that the act was valid. Per Woodworth, Ch. J.: "This legislation is unprecedented, and perhaps severe; but it denies trial by jury only to municipal corporations, who, being creatures of the legislative power, are subject to the legislative will in a manner and to an extent to which citizens are not. The constitutional guaranties of the citizen were respected in giving him a right of appeal; the municipal corporations, having no such guaranties, the right of appeal was not given to them. The theory of the act was therefore unexceptionable, and we have no reason to doubt that its operation in the peculiar circumstances of the case will be beneficent and just." Similar views were expressed by the Supreme Court of |