imposed for public objects, and taxation to aid in building the roads of private railway companies is hardly consistent with a proper respect for the inviolability of private property and individual rights. Fraud usually accompanies its exercise, and extravagant indebtedness is the result, and sooner or later the power will be denied either by constitutional provision (as in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois, it already is) or by legislative enactment." As we are now dealing with constitutional rights, and not with judicial decisions, we think we have fully shown that public or municipal corporations have no authority under the constitution to aid railroads by subscription of stock, or the issue of bonds, and that no authority exists for taxing the people to pay for such stock or bonds; and if it be true that counties and cities are not, and cannot be, clothed with the power to aid in the prosecution of private enterprises, it is equally true that the legislature cannot delegate to the majority of the voters of a county, city, township, or district, the authority to tax the minority for the same purpose. Legislatures cannot create new powers; they can only exercise such as they possess under the constitution. The powers not delegated by the people in the fundamental law, are retained by them. If the people are sovereign, they are the source of power, and all that is not vested in some department of the government remains vested exclusively in the sovereign. If the legislative, executive, or judicial department of the government can act independently of the restrictions and prohibitions contained in the constitution, then the will of the servants of the people is the supreme law, and the sovereign power supposed to reside in the people is destroyed, and constitutional government is at an end. Oppressive taxation imposed without authority, for private and selfish ends, if persisted in, will eventually subvert our republican institutions. This, and other unconstitutional legislation, to some of which we have already referred, has caused such a departure from the old landmarks that it is questionable if we now have, in fact, a republican government. Under the rules adopted in legislation, and the pliant decisions of courts, constitutions are made to yield to the demands of combinations, stock-jobbers, and private corporations, until we cease, as a people, to revere and respect these safeguards of our liberty. CHAPTER XIII. THE FATAL POLICY OF MORTGAGING CITIES AND COUNTIES FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF RAILROADS.