Nathan Clifford

“ They admit that the construction of a railroad is a public improvement, and they insist that the phrase public purpose as employed in the charter must be limited in its signification to such public purposes as fall within the usual and ordinary sphere of municipal corporations. ”

“ III. Viewed in that light it is unmistakably a contract of borrowing money in the open market, and the rule that a corporation quite as much as an individual is held to fair dealing with other parties, applies with all its force, and we repeat, that corporations cannot by their acts, representations, or silence, involve others in onerous engagements, and be permitted to defeat the calculations and claims which their own conduct has superinduced. ”

“ Reasonable doubt cannot be entertained that the terms of the charter, if valid, are sufficiently comprehensive to confer upon the defendants the power to borrow money for such a public purpose as that described in the ordinance under which the bonds were issued, unless it be shown that those terms have in some way been shorn of their usual and ordinary signification. ”

“ Such powers, also, in the absence of any constitutional regulation forbidding it, may be enlarged or diminished, extended or curtailed, or withdrawn altogether, as the legislature shall determine. Construction and repair of highways or streets for public travel within their limits are among the usual purposes of their creation, and the expenses of accomplishing those objects are among their usual and ordinary burdens. ”

“ Decisions to that effect have very much increased in number within the last few years, and are constantly increasing both in the State and Federal courts, until it may be said that the rule here laid down pervades the jurisprudence of the United States.
Exceptional opinions advancing the opposite dectrine may be found, but they cannot be regarded as sound, in view of the fact that the weight of authority is very greatly the other way. ”

“ Recent as many of those decisions are, it seems unnecessary to incumber the opinion with the names of the cases, or to reproduce the reasons assigned as the basis of the respective judgments. Irrespective of the State decisions it is quite obvious that the decisions of this court control the question under consideration, and, consequently, that no further remark upon the proposition is necessary, except to say that the decision in the case of Gelpcke v. ”

“ Evidently the proposition admits that the defendants might borrow money in aid of the improvement described in the ordinance, but the argument is, that in issuing the bonds and delivering them to the company they did not exercise the power in the manner which the charter authorized. Where a municipal corporation was authorized to subscribe to the stock of a railroad company, and to borrow money to pay for the stock subscribed, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania held, in the case of Middleton v. ”