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specific taxes, and that what might remain, if anything, should be absorbed by the interest on the State debt, and by the debt itself, so long as it should exist. The claim for local taxation on companies paying specific taxes was not embodied.

The Convention proceeded under the evident belief that the interest on the educational funds would so nearly consume the taxes that the residue would not be enough to make any serious impression on the principal of the State debt, and that its final extinguishment would ensue from other resources devised and contemplated by the Constitution. The expedient of a sinking fund as marked out in section two was viewed as being the main and efficient instrumentality for effacing the existing general debt. No one seems to have made a methodical calculation of probabilities respecting the time in which the debt, funded and fundable, and then being $2,529,872.87, would be paid under the scheme of the Convention. But all considered that its extinguishment could not be expected in less than a quarter of a century, and one gentleman observed that before it could be accomplished the Constitution would be again revised, and opportunity would be thus presented for contriving such a disposition of these taxes as might be deemed best. There were proposals that their application on the State debt should come to an end in 1852, in 1855, in 1865, and in 1880, and 1852 was agreed on. It was already understood that whenever such application should cease, they were to pass to the Primary School Interest Fund, and without being charged with the interest on the other educational funds. Some members who felt particular solicitude about this interest, and several who felt that these taxes, or at least a portion of them, had been devoted by the legislature to the payment of the State debt, were, as may be gathered from the proceedings, not satisfied with this arrangement. The latter in particular were apprehensive that so early a withholding the whole of these taxes from application on the State debt, however meager the resource they might afford, and without reference to the forwardness of the means of payment through other

channels, would appear like bad faith to the public creditors. After some consideration and the laps of a short time, and at the instance of the chairman of the committee, the fixed date was dropped and the present phraseology inserted.

Turning from the debate to the final work of the Convention, it seems certain that as to the question before us the language was not cautiously chosen. The expressions in section one cannot be allowed to carry their literal sense without leading to confusion and involving various consequences too unreasonable to be defended; and it would be an affront to common sense to suppose that any such result was intended. As argued by counsel, the extinguishment spoken of, if contemplated in the dry and strict sense of the word and in reference to the subject-matter, would be an actual satisfaction by means of payment; and as nothing more could be applied in paying the debt than the amount of the debt, and nothing could be so applied in actual satisfaction before the maturity of the debt unless by the voluntary assent of the holders, and the full amount of the debt being already obtained in advance of its arrival at maturity, and the holders not consenting to receive payment in fact, the application of an accruing excess must be and remain naturally impossible.

The second section, which is closely associated in purpose with the first, required the legislature to create a sinking fund of $20,000 a year, commencing in 1852, with compound interest at six per cent., and an annual increase of at least five per cent. to be applied solely to the payment and extinguishment of the principal of the State debt, and declared it should be continued until the extinguishment thereof." This requirement, it was expected, would be met by taxation. No other resources could have been contemplated.

It was a matter of plain sense that whenever the sinking fund should come to be equal to the principal of the debt nothing would be left to which a further accumulation could possibly apply. Such would be the natural effect. The specification of the object and the express declaration that it should be used therefor would moreover bespeak a purpose

to exclude whatever might be accumulated, from any different use. And it was not impossible that the fund might grow to an equality with the debt before the latter would mature and long before it would be possible to cancel every fraction of it.

Yet by the terms of the section literally expounded the process of accumulation was not to cease on the acquisition of enough to satisfy the debt and on occasion of the complete exhaustion of the object, but was to be kept up so long as the debt, for any reason, accidental or otherwise, should remain uncancelled. Now, in devising this plan, was it the meaning of the Convention that after the obtainment of a sufficient sum to fully and effectually clear off the debt, and whilst holding the means on hand for actual application, there should be no pause, and the inflow should be hence maintained with entire indifference to the fact of the fund being full already, and should be continued so long as a particle of the debt should happen to escape positive extinguishment? If so, the conclusion could scarcely be avoided that there was a covert purpose in the Convention to create by vague provisions and under a deceptive color what, in effect, would be a second fund not appointed to any use and of indefinite amount and enveloped in doubt respecting its legal availability even if admitted to be accessible without an amendment of the Constitution. Grant that the literal sense is the true one, and the difficulties indicated are irrepressible. A fund must be drawn from the people for no other end than to be locked up in the treasury until the debt for which it is not needed is finally satisfied by other means, and in the interim, which cannot be measured, the Primary School Interest Fund must be deprived of the incalculable aids which would naturally flow from it if allowed to receive it. The same narrow sense being appropriated to the status of the accumulated excess, and the fund cannot escape being regarded as devoted by the Constitution to an object which, so far as concerns the possibility of application, has no existence.

It is required that the entire amount brought in under the

provision shall be "applied solely to the payment and extinguishment of the principal of the State debt." The right to make use of the whole or of any part for any different purpose is excluded. is excluded. But the amount necessary to take up the debt being on hand under the proper regulation, no debt remains to receive the application. Speaking potentially, it is paid. Among the consequences, therefore, of a literal reading in the case actually before us, we see that the treasury must accumulate what in substance is the same as two funds, one to be the full equivalent of the State debt, being the clear and unquestioned object of the Constitution, and the other an anomaly without utility or object, involving loss to the community and burdening the treasury with care and responsibility without any sound reason.

This view cannot be maintained, and being rejected, we have not far to seek the natural alternative. What was the substantial object of the Convention as disclosed by the debates and evinced by the result, and what is the spirit and essence of the constitutional provision?

The final purpose, so far as it concerns our present inquiry to refer to it, was to make certain the preservation of the public faith and the punctual payment of the existing State debt, together with the interest. And as subsidiary to this end the State was placed under many restrictions to prevent it from running into new debts, or in any way impairing its ability to maintain financial independence and discharge its obligations. And as the most pregnant parts of the policy directed to the end here mentioned, the Convention ordained the creation of the sinking fund, and as a sort of supplementary or superadded security, devoted to the same important object whatever remnant there might be of the specific taxes in question, after payment of the interest on the educational funds. Their eventual application exerted influence.

It was not difficult, in view of the various other provisions destined to facilitate the payment of the debt, for those who made it a leading object to secure the permanent addition of these taxes to the Primary School Interest Fund, to accept as a condition that full application to the fund should be deferred

until such time as the means of discharging the State debt should be in the treasury, and either waiting for it to mature, or waiting for the lawful evidences to be presented. But they would never have consented that such application should not only be delayed until the debt should be so met, but for such further and uncertain time as might elapse before the literal extinguishment of the last dollar of it. Against a condition not only .so impolitic and so uncalled. for but so repugnant to common sense, they would have raised objections equally plain and decisive.

Further enlargement on the question is not deemed needful. The result reached is that there being no arrears of interest on the State debt in question, and the fund accumulated being sufficient for the payment of the principal, and being now held in the treasury applicable thereto and in readiness therefor whenever the creditors will receive it, any excess, apart from what shall be annually required to meet the annual interest accruing on the debt, must be held applicable under the Constitution, so long as there is no failure in the fund for the payment of the prificipal, to the Primary School Interest Fund, and ought to be assigned thereto.

MARSTON, C. J. and COOLEY, J. concurred.

CAMPBELL, J., dissenting. I regret that in a matter of so much importance I cannot agree in the result arrived at by my brethren. But I am unable to do so.

If there were any ambiguity in the language of the Constitution, there would, perhaps, be room to consider what may be supposed to have been contemplated by the Convention as necessary to be provided for in order to secure the public credit, and to get as near to that result as the language would allow. But it must be remembered that the adoption of the Constitution by the popular vote was the adoption of the language as written, and of nothing else. So far as this particular provision is concerned it has not been suggested or supposed that it was ever discussed before the people as a separate clause at all. Neither have I been able to find any

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