Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 5.djvu/187

171 DECISION UPON MUNICIPAL BONDS. J inquiry be free from all consideration of the objections that may be urged against implying the power to borrow, where it does not exist by virtue of express legislative sanction? Pursuing this course, would the court have had any difficulty in determining whether a power in a small town to contract a loan and promptly raise $21,000 could be " fairly exercised " without resorting to the customary methods, and putting its bonds upon the market? " So far as this case is concerned," say the court in Douglass v. County of Pike, speaking through Chief Justice Waite, " we have no hesitation in saying that the rights of the parties are to be determined according to the law as it was judicially construed to be when the bonds in question were put upon the market." 2 Mindful of this just principle, it seems unfortunate, to say the least, that a power upheld without hesitation by the highest court of Indiana, at the time the town of Monticello voted to borrow the means whereby to preserve her credit, should be declared not to have existed, by the Supreme Court of the United States, under a new doctrine; and that the purchaser of these bonds, who had apparently the best of reason to regard them as unimpeachable, is now told that his supposed securities are worthless. Frank W. Hackett. Washington, D. C. 1 101 U. S. 687.