Section 51. The undoubted power of the legislature to appropriate the revenues of the State for any purpose which it may regard as calculated to promote public good, includes the revenues of municipal corporations for any purpose connected with their past or present condition, saving only such revenues as may by the law creating them be for special and private purposes.

This principle of law is amply and concisely set forth in the case of People vs. Power, 25 III., 187. "The revenues of a county are not the property of the county in the sense in which that of a private person or corporation is regarded. The whole State has an interest in the revenue of a county, and for the public good the legislature must have the power to direct its application. An act, therefore, amending the charter of the city of Springfield and providing that after certain expenditures are allowed the county of Sangamon and the city, the surplus of the county taxes shall be divided between the city and the county in proportion to the amount collected from each, the city's portion to be applied in repairing streets and building and repairing bridges in the city, is not unconstitutional."

3 New Orleans, etc., R. Co. vs. New Orleans, 26 La. Ann., 478. See also Am. & Eng. Ency. of Law (2d ed.), Vol. 20, page 1220. Property acquired by eminent domain or by dedication, where the fee passes from the dedicator, is subject to the control of the legislature, save that the legislature cannot divert it to a use clearly inconsistent with the purpose of the condemnation or dedication. Clinton vs. Cedar Rapids, etc., R. Co., 24 Iowa, 455.

The legislature has the right to repeal so much of an act incorporating a municipal corporation as gives authority to its officers to grant licenses for the sale of ardent spirits, whether the money to be derived from the sale of such licenses was especially appropriated to the support of paupers, or otherwise.4

The legislature possesses the undoubted power to compel a municipality to enter into a contract or incur a debt in matters of general and public concern, in the absence of a local right to act independently of the State; but in those matters or duties purely local and not affecting the people of the State at large, the legislature cannot authorize a contract to be made, or create a debt, without the consent of the corporation. Justice Cooley in the case of People vs. Detroit, 28 Mich., 228, said: "The proposition which asserts the amplitude of legislative control over municipal corporations, when confined, as it should be, to such corporations as agencies of the State in its government, is entirely sound. They are not created exclusively for that purpose, but have other objects and purposes peculiarly local, and in which the State at large, except in conferring the power and regulating its exercise, is legally no more concerned than it is in the individual and private concerns of its several citizens." 5

4 Gutzweller vs. People, 14 III., 142.

5 See also People vs. Batchelor, 53

N. Y., 128; Hagar vs. Supervisors of Yolo Co., 47 Cala., 233; Green vs. Swift, 47 Cal., 536.