348 Meyer—Early Railroad Legislation in Wisconsin. 
within the spirit and intent of these prohibitions; that for the 
state to authorize them to loan their credit in carrying on in¬ 
ternal improvements, is to do indirectly what it cannot do di¬ 
rectly; and that to sustain such a law, is to say that the state 
may grant to a part of itself, the power to do what the whole 
cannot, and that power may be derived from a source where it 
does not exist. ... A city is not the state, neither is a 
town or county. . . . The simple reason is, the object was 
only to prevent the state as a state, from becoming a party to 
such works, and not to prohibit the works from being carried 
on. It was simply a question how they should be carried on. 
« . . If the credit of a city is not the credit of a state, nor 
its debt a state debt, such acts are not liable to the objection 
of doing indirectly what cannot be done directly. The thing 
that cannot be done directly is to contract a state debt for 
works of internal improvement. If the legislature should at¬ 
tempt to authorize a city to contract a state debt for such works, 
that would be attempting to do indirectly what it could not do 
directly, as well as being a very great absurdity. ” 1 Other state 
constitutions, adopted after the downfall of internal improve¬ 
ments as a national system during Jackson’s administration, 
contained similar prohibitions, and in those states municipali¬ 
ties had been doing just what they now sought to do in Wiscon¬ 
sin. Would not the constitutional convention have specifically 
stated the prohibition had it been the intention to prevent such 
aid being authorized by the legislature? Had the convention 
met after a considerable number of municipalities had learned 
from experience the evil effects frequently accompanying such 
a policy, is it not probable that our constitutional fathers would 
have embodied such a prohibition in our constitution? With 
the exception of Iowa, Michigan, and Wisconsin, “the law is 
now firmly established . . . that in the absence of consti¬ 
tutional restraint the legislature may authorize a municipal cor¬ 
poration to subscribe to stock in a railway company, or to aid 
it by a donation , and to issue negotiable bonds in fulfillment of 
those purposes. ” 2 Clark vs. Janesville and the other cases cited 
1 Clark vs. Janesville. 
2 Beach, Public Corporations , §896. 
