+80 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



to alter or recall the privilege granted. No other stipulation on 

 the part of the State was ever suggested to exist, and it was the 

 imagined existence of such stipulation alone which converted 

 what else, in all its essential qualities as well as in its form, was 

 an act of legislation, into a contract on the part of the community 

 with the corporators. Without such stipulation, having an obli- 

 gatory force, I am wholly unable to conceive the ground of dif- 

 ference between the charter of a corporation and any other act of 

 legislation. If a statute lay no obligation on the State to do or 

 refrain from doing a particular thing or one or more particular 

 things, such an enactment seems to me to be a pure act of legis- 

 lation, and in no sense a contract." " A law which seeks to de- 

 prive the Legislature of the power to tax must be so clear, explicit, 

 and determinative that there can be neither doubt nor controversy 

 about its terms, or the consideration which rendes it binding. 

 Every presumption will be made against its surrender, as the 

 power was committed by the people to the Government to be exer- 

 cised, and not to be alienated." (47 Missouri, 158.) 



And Justice Cooley (one of the justices of the Supreme Court 

 of Michigan), in reviewing the action of the United States Su- 

 preme Court, says : " It is not very clear that this court has ever at 

 any time expressly declared the right of a State to grant away the 

 sovereign power of taxation." A court in Pennsylvania has also 

 said : " Revenue is as essential to government as food to individ- 

 uals ; to sell it is to commit suicide." (30 Pennsylvania Statutes, 9.) 



Turning to English jurisprudence, we have an opinion of 

 Edmund Burke that the charter of the East India Company, in 

 virtue of which great authority was exercised, " was a charter to 

 establish monopoly and create power," and not entitled to the 

 protection of the various charters of English liberty. 



So long, however, as the decision of the United States Supreme 

 Court in the Dartmouth College case is not reversed by the same 

 court, the above and many other like expressions of opinion on 

 the part of judges and men learned in the law and in constitu- 

 tional history have nothing of practical significance. 



The study of the customs and religious views of the Kekchi Indians of 

 Guatemala, by Dr. C. Sapper, has uncovered a curious mixture of pagan 

 and Christian ideas. The people are nominally attached to the Roman 

 Catholic Church, yet they will not worship in a church out of their own 

 distx'ict because they believe the god of that church can not understand 

 them. So, when they go away from home, they give up all religious exer- 

 cises. On first crossing a mountain pass the Indians put a stone at the foot 

 of the cross which is usually erected there, often offering flowers and in- 

 cense, and sometimes dancing before it besides ; but if there be no cross at 

 the pass, the Kekchi Indian prays and brings offerings to the heathen god. 



