persons in reversion and remainder, but the title is still voidable by the sovereign upon office found.

Aliens are capable of acquiring, holding, and transmitting movable property, in like manner as our own citizens, and they can bring suits for the recovery and protection of that property. They may even take a mortgage upon real estate by way of security for a debt, and this I apprehend they may do without any statutory permission, for it has been the English law from the early ages. It is also so held in the Supreme Court of the United States, and that the alien creditor is entitled to come into a court of equity to have the mortgage foreclosed, and the lands sold for the payment of his debt. The question whether the alien in such a case could become a valid purchaser of the mortgaged premises sold at auction at his instance, is left untouched; and as such privilege is not necessary for his security, and would be in contravention of the general policy of common law, the better opinion would seem to be, that he could not, in that way, without special provision by statute, become the permanent and absolute owner of the fee.

Even alien enemies, resident in the country, may sue and be sued as in time of peace; for protection to their persons and property is due, and implied from the permission to them to remain, without being ordered out of the country by the President of the United States. The lawful residence does, pro hac vice, relieve the alien from the character of an enemy, and entitles his person and property to protection. The effect of war upon the rights of aliens we need not here discuss, as it has been already considered in a former part of this course of lectures, when treating of the law of nations. During the residence of aliens amongst us, they owe a local allegiance, and are equally bound with natives to obey all general laws for the maintenance of peace and the preservation of order, and which do not relate specially to our own citizens. This is a principle of justice and of public safety universally adopted; and if they are guilty of any illegal act, or involved in disputes with our citizens, or with each other, they are amenable to the ordinary tribunals. of the country.

KENT, COMMENTARIES, II, 268, 273, 274.

A corporation is a franchise possessed by one or more individuals, who subsist, as a body politic, under a special denomination, and are vested, by the policy of the law, with the capacity of perpetual

succession, and of acting in several respects, however numerous the association may be, as a single individual.

The object of the institution is to enable the members to act by one united will, and to continue their joint powers and property in the same body, undisturbed by the change of members, and without the necessity of perpetual conveyances, as the rights of members. pass from one individual to another. All the individuals composing a corporation, and their successors, are considered in law as but one person, capable, under an artificial form, of taking and conveying property, contracting debts and duties, and of enjoying a variety of civil and political rights. One of the peculiar properties of a corporation is the power of perpetual succession; for, in judgment of law, it is capable of indefinite duration. The rights and priv ileges of the corporation do not determine or vary, upon the death or change of any of the individual members. They continue as long as the corporation endures.

It is sometimes said that a corporation is an immortal as well as an invisible and intangible being. But the immortality of a corporation means only its capacity to take in perpetual succession so long as the corporation exists. It is so far from being immortal, that it is well known that most of the private corporations recently created by statute are limited in duration to a few years. There are many corporate bodies that are without limitation, and, consequently, capable of continuing so long as a succession of individual members of the corporation remains and can be kept up.

Corporations are divided into aggregate and sole A corporation sole consists of a single person, who is made a body corporate and politic, in order to give him some legal capacities and advantages, and especially that of perpetuity, which, as a natural person, he cannot have. A bishop, dean, parson, and vicar are given in the English books as instances of sole corporation; and they and their successors in perpetuity take the corporate property and privileges; and the word "successors" is generally as necessary for the succession of property in a corporation sole, as the word "heirs" is to create an estate of inheritance in a private individual. A fee will pass to a corporation aggregate, without the word "successors" in the grant, because it is a body which, in its nature, is perpetual; but, as a general rule, a fee will not pass to a corporation sole, without the word "successors," and it will continue for the life only of the individual clothed with the corporate character. There are very few points of corporation law applicable to a corporation sole.

Another division of corporations, by the English law, is into ecclesiastical and lay. The former are those of which the members are spiritual persons, and the object of the institution is also spiritual. With us they are called religious corporations. This is the description given to them in the statutes of New York, Ohio, and other states, providing generally for the incorporation of religious societies, in an easy and popular manner, and for the purpose of managing, with more facility and advantage, the temporalities belonging to the church or congregation. Lay corporations are again divided into eleemosynary and civil. An eleemosynary corporation is a private charity, constituted for the perpetual distribution of the alms and bounty of the founder. In this class are ranked hospitals for the relief of poor, sick, and impotent persons, and colleges and academies established for the promotion of learning and piety, and endowed with property, by public and privatę donations. Civil corporations are established for a variety of purposes, and they are either public or private. Public corporations are such as are created by the government for political purposes, as counties, cities, towns, and villages; they are invested with subordinate legislative powers, to be exercised for local purposes connected with the public good; and such powers are subject to the control of the legislature of the state. They may also be empowered to take or hold private property for municipal uses; and such prop-ì erty is invested with the security of other private rights. So corporate franchises attached to public corporations are legal estates coupled with an interest, and are protected as private property. If the foundation be private, the corporation is private, however extensive the uses may be to which it is devoted by the founder, or by the nature of the institution. A bank, created by the government, for its own uses, and where the stock is exclusively owned by the government, is a public corporation. So a hospital created and endowed by the government, for general purposes, is a public and not a private charity. But a bank whose stock is owned by private persons is a private corporation, though its object and operations partake of a public nature, and though the government may have become a partner in the association by sharing with the corporators in the stock. The same thing may be said of insurance, canal, bridge, turnpike, and railroad companies. The uses may, in a certain sense, be called public, but the corporations are private, equally as if the franchises were vested in a single person. A hospital founded by

a private benefactor is, in point of law, a private corporation, though dedicated by its charter to general charity. A college, founded and endowed in the same manner, is a private charity, though from its general and beneficent objects it may acquire the character of a public institution. If the uses of an eleemosynary corporation be for general charity, yet such purposes will not of themselves constitute it a public corporation. Every charity which is extensive in its object may, in a certain sense, be called a public charity. Nor will a mere act of incorporation change a charity from a private to be a public one. The charter of the crown, said Lord Hardwicke, cannot make a charity more or less public, but only more permanent. It is the extensiveness of the object that constitutes it a public charity. A charity may be public, though administered by a private corporation. A devise to the poor of a parish is a public charity. The charity of almost every hospital is public, while the corporations are private. To hold a corporation to be public, because the charity was public, would be to confound the popular with the strictly legal sense of terms, and to jar with the whole current of decisions since the time of Lord Coke.

In England, corporations are created and exist by prescription, by royal charter, and by act of Parliament. With us they are created by authority of the legislature, and not otherwise. There are, however, several of the corporations now existing in this country, civil, religious, and eleemosynary, which owed their origin to the crown under the colony administration. Those charters granted prior to the Revolution were upheld, either by express provision in the constitutions of the states, or by general principles of public and common law of universal reception; and they were preserved from forfeiture by reason of any nonuser or misuser of their powers, during disorders which necessarily attended the Revolution.

II.

HISTORY OF THE COMMON LAW.

There are two great systems of law, the Roman or Civil Law and the English or Common Law. Roman law, beginning as the law of the city of Rome, became the law of the Roman Empire and thus of the ancient world, and eventually, by absorption or reception from the twelfth to the eighteenth century, the law of modern continental Europe. It is now the foundation or a principal ingredient of the law in continental Europe, including Turkey, Scotland, Central and South America, Quebec and Louisiana, and all Spanish, Portuguese, or Dutch colonies or countries settled by those peoples. The common law, Teutonic in origin, was developed by the English courts from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries, and has spread over the world with the English race. It now prevails in England and Ireland; the United States, except Louisiana; Canada, except Quebec; Australia; India, except over Hindus and Mohammedans as to inheritance and family law; and the principal English colonies except in South Africa.

DILLON, LAWS AND JURISPRUDENCE OF ENGLAND AND AMERICA, 155.

Now the great fact which, as we approach this subject, meets our view, is that the common law (including in the phrase "common law," as here used, the supplemental equity system of the Court of Chancery which grew out of the common law and constitutes a part of it) underlies the whole system of American law and jurisprudence. The expression, "the common law" is used in various senses: (a) sometimes in distinction from statute law; (b) sometimes in distinction from equity law; and (c) sometimes in distinction from the Roman or civil law. I use it in this lecture in the latter sense. I do not stop to inquire how the common law came to be introduced here and adopted by us. I deal with the fact as it exists, which is that the common law is the basis of the laws of every state and territory of the union, with comparatively unimportant and gradually waning exceptions. And a most fortunate circumstance it is, that, divided as our territory is into so many states, each supreme within the limits of its power, a common and uniform general system of jurisprudence underlies and pervades them all; and