Section 83. It has been held that the power to borrow money or incur debts, is not an incident to their corporate existence, and cannot be exercised unless conferred upon them by law.34

However, other jurisdictions hold to the view that municipal corporations have an implied or incidental power to borrow money for the accomplishment of objects expressly authorized by their charters.

Judge Dillon, in his work on Municipal Corporations (4th Ed.), Par. 117, says: "The question of the incidental authority of municipal corporations to borrow money has not been so thoroughly considered and so often decided as to be entirely closed to controversy. In view of the legislative practice to confer, in terms, all powers so important as this, the dangerous nature of this power, by reason of the temptation it holds out to incur needless debts and to make extravagant expenditures, and the facilities it offers for frauds, and the settled and salutary doctrine that such corporations have no powers but such as are expressly conferred, and those which are necessary to effect the objects of the corporation, and those which are incidental to the express grants, the author, where the legislative will is wholly silent, would be strongly inclined to deny the existence of a general implied or incidental power to borrow money."35

34 Law vs. People, 87 III., 385.

The Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Mayor of Nashville vs. Ray, 19 Wall. (U. S.), 479, held that the power to borrow money was not an incidental and necessary power of a municipal corporation, and that to create a valid indebtedness for money borrowed by a municipality there must exist either express authority, or the same must be clearly implied from granted powers.