Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 5.djvu/578

 566 FEDERAL BKPOETER. �TVhich provided that no improvement of a street, the cost of which was to be assessed upon the owners, should be directed without the concurrence of two-thirda of the members of the city council, unless two-thirds of the owners to be charged should petition in writing therefor, satisfied the constitutional re- quirement. The court further say: "This may be said to be a very imperfect protection; * * * but it is ealcu- lated and designed, by the unanimity or the publicity it re- quires, to prevent any flagrant abuses of the power. Such is plainly its object, and we know of no rights conferred upon courts thus to interfere with the exercise of a legislative dis- cretion which the constitution has delegated to the law-mak- ing power." �In the People v. Mahaney, supra, the court, speaking of the constitutional provision, say that whether it "can be regarded as mandatory in a sense that would make ail charters of municipal corporations * * * which are wanting irt this limitation invalid, we do not feel called upon to decide in this case, sinoe it is olear that a limitation upon taxation is fixed by the act before us. The constitution has not prescribed the character of the restriction which shall be imposed, and from the nature of the case it was impossible to do more than to make it the duty of the legislature to set some bounds to a power 80 liable to abuse. A provision which, like the one eomplained of, limits the power of taxation to the actual ôxpenses, as estimated by the governing board, after first limit- ing the power of the board to incur expense within narrow limits, is as much a restriction as if it confined the power to a certain percentage upon taxable property, or to a sum pro- portioned to the number of inhabitants in the city. Whether the restriction fixed upon would as effectually guard the citi- zen against abuse as any other which might have been estab- lished, was a question for the legislative department of the government, and does not concem us in this inquiry." �The reasoning of the courts in the two cases cited we regard as peculiarly applicable to the question involved in the case at bar; and we adopt it as sustaining our conclusions' as to the validity of the statute under consideration. ����