Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 1).pdf/512

 legislative relief; for the annual interest upon this debt—$600—(10 per cent. on $6,000) would exceed yearly by over $400 the maximum tax which could be levied to apply thereon. The increase in the assessed valuation might ultimately enable the district to discharge the annual interest, but the payment of the principal must await a change in the law. An evidence of indebtedness, whose interest cannot for years be paid, whose principal can be discharged only in the event of legislative interference, must have’ but little value in the market, and will inevitably bring to the treasury of the district much less than its face value. The inhabitants of the district in any one year were not to be permitted thus to waste the property of future inhabitants, and create burdens, in excess of the benefits received, to be thereafter imposed upon property and values which should subsequently come under the taxing powers of the district. Our views find support in the decision of the territorial supreme court in Farmers’, etc., Bank v. School-Dist. No. 53, (Dak.) 42 N. W. Rep. 767.. We find nothing in Capital Bank v. School Dist. No. 85, id. 774, decided by the same court at the same term, at war with the other decision. It is true that in the first case the court, while favoring the construction we adopt, limited the scope of its decision to the denial of the right to create a present indebtedness by the issue of warrants payable immediately in excess of the amount of tax that could be levied during the year the debt was contracted. This is the doctrine of Minnesota under a similar statute, but we cannot give it our assent. If the contract to build the school house is valid, we see nothing in the statute to prevent the issuing of warrants to pay the contract price therefor, payable immediately, and such warrants the creditor is entitled to. If, as we hold, the policy of the law condemns the extravagant debt, it is of no importance whether the debt is payable at once or in the future. It is, in fact, payable in the future, although the warrant is due immediately, for a judgment recovered upon such warrant can be satisfied only from an insufficient tax to be levied for years before full payment can be made. We do not believe that the legislature intended that these municipal corporations, intrusted with so few duties, possessing such