| Show THE UOIinOWISQ POWER In the Council on Saturday Mr BASKIK read from the act of Congress of July 30 18SG the following section That no law of any territorial legislature shall authorize any debt to bo contrG ted by or in behalf of such territory except in the following cases To meet a casual deficit in the revenues to pay the interest upon the territorial debt to suppress Insurrections or to provide for the public defense except that in addition to any indebtcdnes created for such purposes tho legislature leg-islature may authorize a loan for the erection or penal charitable or educational institutions for such territory if the total indebtedness of the territory is not thereby made to exceed 1 per centum upon the assessed value of tho tax able property in such territory ns shown by the last general assessment for taxation Whether or not the legislature can create cre-ate alegal debtit will thus bpsoendeponds up the meaning of the phrase a casual deficit in tho revenues There is no demand de-mand or at least no such demand as would call for the incurring of a public debt for the erection of penal charitable or educational institutions If a casual deficit de-ficit means that tho revenue has been less than the expenditure then tho legislature can proceed with tho bonding bill for in addition to the appropriations of two years ago money has been borrowed to keep up the public institutions heretofore hereto-fore established The question raised by the section quoted ii one demanding very careful consideration by our lawmakers No matter bow pressing are the needs of the territory it will nevor do to issue an invalid loan Our obligations must bo as good as gold and without suspicion as to their locality It is bad enough to havo cities plunged into debt to such an extent that eminent lawyers must bo employed tog to-g e an opinion ae to tho liability of tho corporations for tho bonds sold Another thing which the legislature should do is to put a stop to tho practice of officials borrowing money and pledging tho succeeding legislature to pay Of course these loans are not binding upon tho territory except in a moral sense aa the officials who create cre-ate the obligations have no legal authority to borrow for tho territory At tho same time the debts are paid together with extravagant ex-travagant interest on tho money We would not be understood as intimating intimat-ing that any money has been improperly borrowed or that any has been borrowed in excess of the requirements but tho practice IB exceedingly bad and dangerous It should be at once discontinued otherwise other-wise one of thsso days the territory may find itself under moral obligations to pay some heavy debts thus illegally contracted and the legislature will have to repudiate the obligations or pay them by a wrongful appropriation of the peoples money Wo know what will be said against forbidding for-bidding the practice It will be urged that the appropriation having been exhausted ex-hausted the public institution cannot be closed but must be maintained by borrowing borrow-ing money but there must come a time when the expenditures of public institutions institu-tions are kept within the appropriation and the sooner that time approaches the better It will not do to give boards the power to incur unlimited indebtedness unless I un-less wo want to court disaster I The matter is ono demanding the consideration I consid-eration of tho legislature at this cession Wo understand that enormous interest bills for borrowed money have been presented pre-sented and will have to bo allowed and a considerable portion of tho territorial revenue rev-enue for tho next two years has been mortgaged mort-gaged to pay tho expenses of public institutions insti-tutions of tho past two years |
