The separate States of our Union, as sovereign in their own sphere quite as much as the national Government is sovereign in its sphere, have unlimited power to contract debts for State purposes through their regularly constituted authorities; and consequently to issue promissory notes or bonds to liquidate such debts. New York commenced in this way in 1817 the magnificent enterprise of the Erie Canal, to connect the great Lakes with the city of New York by an inland water-way for commerce, and the completion of this in 1825 made the State the "Empire State," and the city the undisputed commercial metropolis of the Union. In a similar way Massachusetts undertook in 1862 the completion of the Hoosac Tunnel for a railway lengthwise of the State; and although the process became unduly expensive, and great abuses sprang up in connection with it, no one now questions that the pecuniary and moral resources of the State have been augmented, on the whole, by contracting the debt and providing by taxation for the liquidation of both interest and principal. The credit of Massachusetts, that is, the ability to borrow money at low rates of interest, has been at times greater than that of the United States; mainly because the State in 1862 and onwards refused to avail itself of a depreciated national paper-money (greenbacks) made legal tender for all debts, with which to pay the interest on its then existing State debt, but persisted throughout (alone of the States) to pay that interest so soon as due in gold coin. On the other hand, several of the States of the Union at different times, and under more or less of provocation and justification, have made a partial or entire repudiation of certain portions of their public debts, justly damaging to their individual credit, and even to the good name abroad of the whole people of the United States. Counties and cities and towns may also issue interest-bearing bonds for public improvements, which have a _quasi_ governmental character, but only under conditions and to a maximum amount prescribed by a law of the State.