authority and responsible to it, the members of which should be removable by the Mayor at will, who in turn is responsible for the good government of the city to its inhabitants, have become independent bodies having debt-creating power without central control.

The city council chamber, even when not stripped of all responsible legislative functions, as has been notably the case in the city of New York, is called into being under a faulty system. Small districts are created for the election of members of the Board of Aldermen, and frequently a provision is made by which minorities and majorities in the districts have equal representation, so that either small politicans come to the surface in consequence of the small district, or caucus nominations are equivalent to an election, and the election becomes a mere form. This has at times been called minority representation, but it is not so in any proper sense, as it is mere party representation, and not representation of the people.

Attempts have been made in some of the Constitutions of the States, by limiting the ratio of assessment, to check extravagance, but this has proved quite futile as a remedy, because the law is evaded by increasing the assessment so as to keep within the ratio, so that in some of the cities where such a

limitation has prevailed the assessed value of property is largely in excess of its actual value, and the ratio of taxation takes a considerable proportion of the actual rental value of real property.

The laws in relation to cities are so constantly changed by the political parties in power within the State, so as to increase patronage in favor of the party in power, and to decrease it as against the adverse party, by either change of officials in office or a transfer of large powers from one department to another, that the Chief Justice of the State of New York in 1875, in a judicial opinion stated that "it is clearly unsafe for any one to speak confidently of the exact condition of the law in respect to public improvements in the cities of New York and Brooklyn. The enactments with reference thereto have been modified, superseded and repealed so often and to such an extent that it is difficult to ascertain just what statutes are in force at any particular time." This grave condition of affairs has led many of the States to appoint bodies of men especially commissioned to inquire into the causes of these evils, and to suggest remedies. New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey have received reports from the commissions thus appointed, but the remedies proposed threatened so seriously to impair both the power and the

patronage of the politicians that they failed of acceptance.

Fur

It will be found that the main remedy for almost all the evils of administrative machinery of American cities will be, in the adoption of a constitutional limitation upon the power to create indebtedness, and in a constitutional inhibition upon the Legislature to interfere with the city's administration unless such legislation is demanded by the inhabitants of the city in some formal manner. ther remedies will be found in the remodeling of city charters so as to centre responsibility in the Mayor and the Board of Aldermen, and to subordinate all executive heads of departments to the Mayor and to the legislative department of the city; in the adoption of some system of minority representation, upon a scale sufficiently adequate to create a balance of power within party lines, so that groups of taxpayers may, independent of party dictation, inject representatives of property interests into the local legislative body; in the holding of municipal elections at a different time from State or National elections, and finally in the growth of a conviction in the community which will in time lead them to regard municipal offices as business trusts having no relation to party divisions on political questions, and to repudiate as an unwarranted intrusion the claim of party managers to make nominations for such offices.

ADDENDA.

BEFORE treating of constitutional developments since the publication of the work in 1882, a few subordinate corrections are made in these addenda, necessitated by the intervening legislation which has made a change in the conditions described in the text.

On page 30, reference is made to the Apportionment Act of 1872, which fixed the number of the members of the House of Representatives at 292. By the Apportionment Act of 1882 (Chapter 20 of the Laws of the 47th Congress, passed February 25th, 1882), enacted as the result of the census of 1880, the number of representatives having a voting capacity is increased to 325; adding to this membership eight delegates from the Territories, who, however, cannot vote, the House consists in all of 333 members.

On page 43, it is stated that inasmuch as the issue of legal tender notes was based, by the prior decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, upon the exercise of the war power, there was no ground for apprehension that any addition would be made to the legal tender note issues of the United States in times of peace, and the author expressed the hope that the prior decisions would be permitted to stand as the final expression of the opinion of the Court of last resort of the United States upon that question. That Court, however, in the case of Juilliard vs. Greenman, 110 U. S., 421, decided, March 3d, 1884, that Congress had constitutional power, in times of peace as well as of war, to make the treasury notes of the United States a legal tender in payment of private debts, and that it was authorized to reissue the legal tender notes, which had been practically redeemed under authority of law by the Treasury Depart

ment. Justice Gray, in giving the opinion that the power to issue paper money was one of the attributes of sovereignty which appertains to all governments in time of peace as well as of war, felt justified in coming to the conclusion that no such limitation as was put by prior decisions upon this power of the national government was warranted.

This decision is somewhat out of harmony with all the prior decisions of the Court, which conceded that the power to coin money did not include the power to stamp pieces of paper, and which recognized the principle that the government of the United States was one of delegated authority, had no attributes of sovereignty inherent in itself, and that its powers were only such as were specifically delegated (or such as arose from necessary implication as being impliedly delegated) for the purpose of carrying into effect the express powers conferred upon Congress by the Constitution. In the language of Chief Justice Marshall, aptly quoted by Justice Field in his dissenting opinion, the implied powers of the United States are such that they must be appropriate and plainly adapted to the end, not prohibited by, and consistent with, the letter and spirit of the Constitution.

On page 44, which states the number of Judges assigned, under the judiciary laws of the United States, to each district, attention should be called to the Act of the 49th Congress, passed March 3d, 1887, which created an additional Circuit Judgeship for the Second Judicial District, which embraces New York City, to meet the necessities arising from the growth of business in that district.

On page 54, in commenting upon the Granger decisions, in which the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the right of the States to subject railway corporations chartered by them to restrictions and limitations which had not been originally incorporated into the acts organizing them, it is proper now to refer to the limitation imposed by the decisions more recently rendered by the Supreme Court in the cases of the Wabash Railway Company vs. Illinois, 118 U. S., 557 (1886), and the Western