The first of the policies indicated was that counties and municipalities should not contract interest-bearing debts and postpone their payment for a long period of years. This policy was fixed and not deviated from; for in every act which authorized a county or municipality to expend money for the erection of public buildings of any kind, or for any other purpose, such county or municipality was also required to levy a tax to pay for it; and, to prevent extravagance or the erection of a building or buildings for public uses not required, the act fixed a limit in excess of which tax should not be levied or collected. Was this because they were wiser than we are? No. They read the constitution, took an oath to support it, and found that it said, as it does now, that “the general assembly shall have power to authorize the several counties and incorporated towns in this state to impose taxes for county and corporation purposes respectively”; and they had not then become wise enough to construe the true meaning out of this provision, and make it mean that the general assembly shall have power to authorize counties and incorporated towns to borrow money and issue promises and obligations to pay it ten, twenty or thirty years after date, with interest payable semi-annually. If some holder of such promises to pay, or of bonds issued by a county or an incorporated town or city, should be called upon to point out that provision in our constitution which gives power to the general assembly to authorize a county or municipality to enter into and deliver such obligations, what section, clause, line or word could be found to make such bonds legal, valid and binding? They had the “fee question,” the “school question,” public roads, the regulation of private corporations, the “gold” or “specie contract” question, all to deal with; and they dealt with all of them prior and up to the year 1801, taking hold of and settling these complicated, vexatious problems in a courageous and statesmanlike way. The fee act, passed in April, 1796, not only regulated the compensation of public officers, but fixed the fees of attorneys in civil suits, from “twelve dollars and fifty cents in any suit in equity,” down to “one dollar and twenty-five cents in any appeal from the judgment of a justice of the peace to the county courts.” The fees allowed attorneys were specified in each character of the various suits, the greatest sum allowed being twelve dollars and fifty cents. Two acts, however, ought to have special prominence given to them in Tennessee at this particular time (March, 1897). One of these, bearing on the subject of “gold” or “specie contracts,” with the cunning methods used to ultimately accomplish the repeal of the most important section in it, is here given in full: