Where a company or a community defers payment for its purchases, it is said to issue _bonds_, which are simply formal notes, usually with attached notes, or coupons, for interest at stated times, issued by qualified officers under specific legislation. These are so easily understood and tested for their quality as to become a part of the general credit of the country. They gain a well understood market value, and pass from hand to hand with greatest readiness. This fact adds to the ease with which they may be issued, while the extended time, from ten to thirty years, increases both the convenience of possession and the readiness to issue. The people of a city do not hesitate to supply themselves with magnificent waterworks at the expense of the people a generation later. Thus municipal indebtedness is easy to contract, and the hard lesson of paying for dead horses is seldom effectually learned. More insidious still is the temptation to issue the bonds of a county for the building of a railroad, whose prospective benefit in adding to the value of lands is indefinitely magnified. A community of farmers already burdened by mortgages can be tempted into additional burdens in county bonds from expectation that a new railroad will double the value of their farms. The facility with which states and nations negotiate bonds is so well understood that it scarcely needs mention. Yet the burdens of taxation so grievously felt are often self-inflicted by the people who favor unbounded indebtedness. It is rarely the case that a well-to-do school district is not better off when it meets the cost of its schoolhouse by immediate taxes rather than to postpone payment by bonds.