The present action involves the validity of the bonds and the coupons thereto attached of the $25,000 issue, some of which are held by the defendant in error.
Their validity is assailed upon several grounds, each of which will be briefly examined.
It is contended that the election held on the 3d of June, 1867, under the charter of the Danville, Urbana, Bloomington, and Pekin Railroad Company, whereby the subscription of $50,000 was made and bonds issued in payment thereof, exhausted the power of the township under that charter, and that any additional subscription was without authority of law.
This position is clearly untenable. The twelfth section of the charter of the railroad company furnishes a conclusive answer to this proposition. That section declares that 'to further aid in the construction of said road by said company, any incorporated town or townships in counties acting under the township organization law, along the route of said road, may subscribe to the capital stock of said company in any sum, not exceeding $250,000.' That the plaintiff in error belongs to the class of townships described in that section, is not disputed. Its right, consequently, to make subscriptions, from time to time, until they reached the prescribed limit, seems to be too clear to require argument in its support. The charter contains no word, clause, or section indicating that the authority of the township to make subscriptions ceased after the first subscription. The legislature fixed a limit beyond which the township could not go in its subscriptions to the company in question, but left it free-the people consenting by popular vote-to make subscriptions in such sums and at such times as it deemed necessary or proper, within the aggregate amount named in the section which has been quoted. People v. Town of Waynesville, 88 Ill. 469.
The next proposition urged upon our attention is that by the consolidation to which we have referred a new corporation was created by the name of the Indianapolis, Bloomington, and Western Railway Company, and the original companies dissolved; that there was no power vested in the electors, the corporate authority of the township of Empire, under the charter of the Danville, Urbana, Bloomington, and Pekin Railroad Company, to hold an election, to subscribe stock and issue bonds to that new company. This proposition is equally untenable with the first.
By a general statute of Illinois, passed Feb. 28, 1854, and in force as well at the date of the charter of the Danville, Urbana, Bloomington, and Pekin Railroad Company, as when it was consolidated with the Indianapolis, Crawfordsville, and Danville Railroad Company, express authority was conferred upon all railroad companies then organized or thereafter to be organized, which then had or might thereafter have their termini fixed by law, whenever their road or roads intersected by continuous lines, to 'consolidate their property and stock with each other, and to consolidate with companies out of this [that] State, whenever their lines connect with the lines of such companies out of this [that] State.' That statute further provided that the consolidated company, by the name agreed upon, should be a body corporate and politic, and 'shall have all the powers, franchises, and immunities which the said respective companies shall have by virtue of their respective charters, before such consolidation passed, within the State of Illinois.' Ill. Rev. Stat. Gross (3d ed.), pp. 537, 538.
