Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 3).pdf/296

 and when the bonds were voted for they appealed to no chancellor to protect their property from an illegal debt. Not only the considerations which lie at the foundation of the rule protecting the public in dealing with a de facto officer, but also a principle very analogous to that of equitable estoppel, protect these bondholders against repudiation under the forms of the law. If there cannot be a de facto school district, there cannot be a de facto city. If illegality in the proceedings to effect organization is fatal to the existence of a district, it is equally as fatal to the existence of a municipal corporation of a higher grade. Given a case where the defects in the incorporation of the city are as fatal as in this case, and then deny to that corporation any effect, although a city government is in fact inaugurated and carried on, and the consequences would be intolerable. Open and acknowledged anarchy would for some reasons be preferable. In after years tax titles would be destroyed; every officer of the city would be a trespasser when the discharge of what would be his duty on the theory of the existence of the corporation led to an interference with the property or person of others. Every police or other peace officer and every magistrate acting under the supposed authority of the city government would be liable for extortion, for assault and battery, for false imprisonment, and could be prosecuted criminally for acts done in good faith in the enforcement of the criminal law. An army of creditors whose savings have gone into the city treasury, and through the treasury into public buildings and other public improvements, find, to their astonishment and dismay, that they have received in exchange beautifully lithographed but worthless bonds as souvenirs of their abused confidence. All that has been done in good faith under color of law is only barefaced usurpation, and to be treated as such for all purposes. Such a doctrine would be the author of confusion, injustice, and almost endless litigation. The imagination cannot embrace all the gross wrong to which it would lead when pushed, as it must be, to its logical consequences. On the other hand, no great injury can result to the citizens or state by