liabilities present or prospective of any individual association, municipal, or other corporation," as also to take stock in a corporation, or otherwise embark in any gainful enterprise. Many Constitutions also forbid the assumption by the State of the debts of any individual or municipal corporation.

The care of the people for their financial freedom and safety extends even to local bodies. Many of the recent Constitutions limit, or direct the legislature to limit, the borrowing powers of counties, cities, or towns, sometimes even of incorporated school districts, to a sum not exceeding a certain percentage on the assessed value of the taxable property within the area in question. This percentage is usually five per cent; sometimes, however, seven per cent; or even (New York, Amend. of 1884) ten per cent. Sometimes also the amount of the tax leviable by a local authority in any year is restricted to a definite sum for instance, to one-half per cent on the valuation. And, in nearly all the States, cities, counties, or other local incorporated authorities are forbidden to pledge their credit for, or undertake the liabilities of, or take stock in, or otherwise give aid to, any undertaking or company. Sometimes this prohibition is absolute; sometimes it is made subject to certain conditions, and may be avoided by their observance. For instance, there are States in which the people of a city can, by special vote, carried by a two-thirds majority, or, a three-fifths majority, or (in Colorado) by a bare majority of the taxpayers, authorize the contracting of a debt which the municipality could not incur by its ordinary organs of government. Sometimes there is a direction that any municipality creating a debt must at the same time provide for its extinction by a sinking fund. Sometimes the restrictions imposed apply only to a particular class of undertakings-e.g. banks or railroads. The differences between State and State are endless; but everywhere the tendency is to make the protection against local indebtedness and municipal extravagance more and more strict; nor will any one who knows these local

1 Constitution of Missouri of 1875 (Art. iv. § 45), a Constitution whose provisions on financial matters and restrictions on the legislature are copious and instructive. Similar words occur in nearly all Western and Southern, as well as in some of the more recent Eastern Constitutions.

2 See the elaborate provisions of the Constitution of Missouri of 1875 (Art. x. § 11), and of the Constitution of Montana, 1889 (Art. xii. § 9).

authorities, and the temptations, both good and bad, to which they are exposed, complain of the strictness.1

Cases, of course, occur in which a restriction on the taxing power or borrowing power of a municipality is found inconvenient, because a costly public improvement is rendered more costly if it has to be done piecemeal. The corporation of Brooklyn was thus prevented from making all at once a great street which would have been a boon to the city, and more money had to be spent in buying up the land for it bit by bit. But the evils which have followed in America from the immixture both of States and of cities in enterprises of a public nature, and the abuses incident to an unlimited power of undertaking improvements, have been so great as to make people willing to bear with the occasional inconveniences which are inseparable from restriction.

"A catalogue of these evils would include the squandering of the public domain; the enrichment of schemers whose policy it has been first to obtain all they can by fair promises, and then avoid, as far and as long as possible, the fulfilment of the promises; the corruption of legislation; the loss of State credit; great public debts recklessly contracted for; moneys often recklessly expended; public discontent, because the enterprises fostered from the public treasury, and on the pretence of public benefit, are not believed to be managed in the public interest; and finally, great financial panic, collapse, and disaster.” 2

The provisions above described have had the effect of steadily reducing the amount of State debts, although the wealth of the country makes rapid strides. This reduction was between 1870 and 1880, about 25 per cent in the case of State debts, and in that of county, town, and school district debts about 8 per cent. In the decade ending with 1890 the reduction in State debts was $67,218,760 (nearly half of this, however, due to scaling down of debts of Southern States); but county debts rose from $124,105,027 to $145,048,045, and the school district debts from $17,580,682 to $36,701,948. In cities there was within the decade 1870-80, not only no reduction, but an increase of over 100 per cent, possibly as much as 130 per cent. In 1890 the total debt, less sinking fund, of municipalities exceeding 4000 inhabitants was returned at $646,507,644

1 A specimen of the provisions restricting borrowing powers will be found in the extracts from the Constitution of Oklahoma in the Appendix.

2 Cooley, Constit. Limit., p. 266.

against $623,784,262 in 1880, but owing to the growth of population the amount per capita which was $45.06 in 1880, had fallen in 1890 to $31.69. In 1902, while the total State debt was, as above mentioned, $235,000,000, that of counties and minor civil divisions was $1,630,000,000.

This striking difference between the cities and the States may be explained in several ways. One is that cities cannot repudiate, while sovereign States can and do. Another may be found in the later introduction into State Constitutions of restrictions on the borrowing powers of municipalities. But the chief cause is to be found in the conditions of the government of great cities, where the wealth of the community is largest, and is also most at the disposal of a multitude of ignorant voters. Several of the greatest cities lie in States which did not till recently, or have not even now, imposed adequate restrictions on the borrowing power of city councils. Now city councils, as we shall see presently, are not only incapable administrators, but are prone to such public improvements as present opportunities for speculation, for jobbery, and possibly even for wholesale embezzlement.

1 In some parts of New England the city, town, or other municipal debt is also the personal debt of every inhabitant, and is therefore an excellent security.

CHAPTER XLIV

THE WORKING OF STATE GOVERNMENTS

THE difficulty I have already remarked of explaining to Europeans the nature of an American State, viz. that there is in Europe nothing similar to it, recurs when we come to inquire how the organs of government which have been described play into one another in practice. To say that a State is something lower than the nation but greater than a municipality, is to say what is obvious, but not instructive; for the peculiarity of the State is that it combines some of the features which are to Europeans characteristic of a nation and a nation only, with others that belong to a municipality.

The State seems great or small according to the point of view from which one regards it. It is vast if one regards the sphere of its action and the completeness of its control in that sphere, which includes the maintenance of law and order, nearly the whole field of civil and criminal jurisprudence, the supervision of all local governments, an unlimited power of taxation. But if we ask, Who are the persons that manage this great machine of government; how much interest do the citizens take in it; how much reverence do they feel for it? the ample proportions we had admired begin to dwindle, for the persons turn out to be usually insignificant, and the interest of the people to have declined. The powers of State authorities are powers like those of a European parliament; but they are wielded by men most of whom are less distinguished and less respected by their fellows than are those who fill the city councils of Manchester or Cologne. Several States exceed in area and population some ancient European monarchies. But their annals may not have been illumined by a single striking event or brilliant personality.

A further difficulty in describing how a State government works arises from the endless differences of detail between the several States. The organic frame of government is similar in all; but its functional activities vary according to the tem

per and habits, the ideas, education, and traditions of the inhabitants of the State. A European naturally says, "Select a typical State, and describe that to us." But there is no such thing as a typical State. Massachusetts or Connecticut is a fair sample of New England, Minnesota or Iowa of the North-West; Georgia or Alabama shows the evils, accompanied no doubt by great recuperative power, that still vex the South; New York and Illinois the contrast between the tendencies of an ignorant city mob and the steady-going farmers of the rural counties. But to take any one of these States as a type, asking the reader to assume what is said of it to apply equally to the other forty-seven commonwealths, would land us in inextricable confusions. I must therefore be content to speak quite generally, emphasizing those points in which the colour and tendencies of State governments are much the same over the whole Union, and begging the European reader to remember that illustrations drawn, as they must be drawn, from some particular State, will not necessarily be true of every other State government, because its life may go on under different conditions.

The State governments, as has been observed already, bear a family likeness to the National or Federal government, a likeness due not only to the fact that the latter was largely modelled after the systems of the old thirteen States, but also to the influence which the Federal Constitution has exerted ever since 1789 on those who have been drafting or amending State Constitutions. Thus the Federal Constitution has been both child and parent. Where the State Constitutions differ from the Federal, they invariably differ in being more democratic. It still expresses the doctrines of 1787. They express the views of later days, when democratic ideas have been more rampant, and men less cautious than the sages of the Philadelphia Convention have given legal form to popular beliefs. This difference, which appears not only in the mode of appointing judges, but in the shorter terms which the States allow to their officials and senators, comes out most clearly in the relations established between the legislative and the executive powers. The National executive, though disjoined from the legislature in a way strange to Europeans, is nevertheless all of a piece. The President is supreme; his ministers are his subordinates, chosen by him from among