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comes to age, he may either agree or disagree to it, as he thinks prudent or proper, without alleging any reason; and so may his heirs after him, if he dies without having completed his agreement (b). It is, farther, generally true, that an infant, under twenty-one, can make no deed but what is afterwards voidable: yet in some cases (c) he may bind himself apprentice, by deed indented, or indentures, for seven years; and (d) he may by deed or will appoint a guardian to his children, if he has any. Lastly, it is generally true that an infant can make no other contract that will bind him: yet he may bind himself to pay for his necessary meat, drink, apparel, physic, and such other necessaries (17); and likewise for his good teaching and

(b) Co. Lit. 2.

(c) Stat. 5 Eliz. c. 4 ; 43 Eliz. c. 2;

Cro. Car. 179.

(d) Stat. 12 Car. II. c. 24.

(17) It has been held, that an infant is not liable to repay money lent to him, although he should lay it out in necessaries. (1 Salk. 386). Nor is he bound to pay for goods bought to trade with. (Bull. N. P. 154). But debts contracted during infancy are a good consideration to support a promise made to pay them, when a person is of full age. Infancy may be given in evidence upon the general issue, or it may be pleaded. (Bull. 152).

And where the defendant pleads infancy, and the plaintiff replies that the defendant confirmed the promise or contract when he was of age; the plaintiff need only prove the promise, and the defendant must discharge himself by proof of the infancy. (1 T. R. 648).-CH.

[Though an infant is not liable, at common law, to repay money which he has borrowed and applied to the purchase of necessaries, yet, in equity, it has been determined that the lender stands in the place of the person who supplied the necessaries, and as the latter might have recovered the price

of the necessaries at law, the lender may recover in equity. (Marlow v. Pitfield, 1 P. Wms. 559).

[An infant cannot be made a bankrupt: (Ex parte Layton, 6 Ves. 440): but, if he held himself out to the world as an adult, contracting debts as such, the fiat of bankruptcy against him will not be superseded on petition, but he will be left to bring his action at law. (Ex parte Watson, 16 Ves. 266).

[An infant may be charged in trover, for that implies a tort; but he cannot be decreed to account as bailiff or factor, nor be sued in respect of contracts. (Smalley v. Smalley, 1 Eq. Ca. Ab. 6). And therefore, upon the principle that remedies ought to be mutual, an infant cannot sustain a bill for the specific performance of a contract, (Flight v. Bolland, 4 Russ. 301), though he may maintain an action in respect of a contract partly executed. (Warwick v. Bruce, 2 Mau. & Sel. 205; S. C. 6 Taunt. 118).

[When an estate is purchased on behalf of an infant, notice of any equitable incumbrance is as binding as if the sale had been made to an adult;

instruction, whereby he may profit himself afterwards (e). And thus much at present for the privileges and disabili ties of infants.

(e) Co. Lit. 172.

and if the infant, when he comes of age, agrees to the purchase, he must take it subject to such equitable in

cumbrances.
Meriv. 222).

(Toulmin v. Steere, 3

ED.]

CHAPTER XVIII

OF CORPORATIONS.

Of corporations.

Bodies politic, bodies corporate, or corporations.

WE have hitherto considered persons in their natural capacities, and have treated of their rights and duties. But, as all personal rights die with the person, and as the necessary forms of investing a series of individuals, one after another, with the same identical rights, would be very inconvenient, if not impracticable, it has been found necessary, when it is for the advantage of the public to have any particular rights kept on foot and continued, to constitute artificial persons, who may maintain a perpetual succession, and enjoy a kind of legal immortality.

These artificial persons are called bodies politic, bodies corporate, (corpora corporata), or corporations: of which there is a great variety subsisting, for the advancement of religion, of learning, and of commerce (1); in order to preserve entire

(1) As the constitution of our municipal corporations, and the laws immediately affecting them, are likely to undergo great reforms, very shortly; annotations upon the abuses which have sprung up in these bodies, as they actually exist, may be spared; for those abuses may, perhaps, before this volume is published, be corrected.

Since the above sentence was written, the expectation therein expressed, has, with respect to Scotch and English corporations, been realized: the statute of 5 & 6 Gul. IV. c. 76, has remodelled our English municipal corporations, and placed the administration of the powers and duties thereof in the hands of those whom the parties immediately interested may elect. As

there was no disposition to press hard upon the old system when it was crumbling to its fall, there is still less inclination, on the part of the present writer, to trample on it, now it has been thrown to the ground. Though the act just cited received some damage in passing through the house of peers, it still has placed the government of the municipal corporations of England upon so broad a basis of popular election, that it will be the fault of the burgesses themselves if their local interests are not henceforward properly attended to. The measure has even a more democratic tendency than the act for reforming the representation of the people. Centralization of power at the seat of govern

and for ever those rights and immunities, which, if they were granted only to those individuals of which the body corporate is composed, would upon their death be utterly lost and extinct. To shew the advantages of these in corporations, let us consider the case of a college in either of our universities, founded ad studendum et orandum, for the encouragement and support of religion and learning. If this were a mere voluntary assembly, the individuals which compose it might indeed read, pray, study, and perform scholastic exercises together, so long as they could agree to do so: but they could neither [468] frame, nor receive any laws or rules of their conduct; none, at least, which would have any binding force, for want of a coercive power to create a sufficient obligation. Neither could they be capable of retaining any privileges or immunities for if such privileges be attacked, which of all this unconnected assembly has the right, or ability, to defend them? And, when they are dispersed by death or otherwise, how shall they transfer these advantages to another set of students, equally unconnected as themselves? So also, with regard to holding estates or other property, if land be granted for the purposes of religion or learning to twenty individuals not incorporated, there is no legal way of continuing the pro

ment, is the surest mode of extending regal or aristocratical authority: the establishment of a great number of "little republics," (as Blackstone calls corporations, p. 468), throughout the country, and not only allowing but compelling them to learn how to govern themselves, must necessarily increase democratic ascendancy. Other organic changes must follow, either with a good or a bad grace on the part of the legislature: may they all work for the general good; and no exasperation be excited by fruitless delay or impotent resistance to what is abstractedly just, and practically inevitable.

To give a summary of the contents of the act cited would occupy too much space, and is the less required, as every burgess will, of course, study the act itself.

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municipal authorities than has been
granted to England, was established
with respect to Scotland, by the
statutes of 3 & 4 Gul. IV. cc. 76 &
77. But, whilst this note is going
through the press, a similar mea-
sure of justice to Ireland has been re-
pudiated by the house of lords. The
present writer has, in an earlier note,
which is already printed, strongly de-
clared himself against a repeal of the
Union. He does not, even now, wish
to cancel that note: but, unless the
Union is drawn closer by bonds of at-
tachment it will not hold together long.
Ireland may, perhaps, be again reduced
to the condition of a conquered pro-
vince; but unless she is admitted to an
equal participation in all the benefits of
our free constitution, it will be only
adding insult to injury to speak of her
as part of the United Empire.

perty to any other persons for the same purposes, but by endless conveyances from one to the other, as often as the hands are changed. But when they are consolidated and united into a corporation, they and their successors are then considered as one person in law: as one person, they have one will, which is collected from the sense of the majority of the individuals: this one will may establish rules and orders for the regulation of the whole, which are a sort of municipal laws of this little republic; or rules and statutes may be prescribed to it at its creation, which are then in the place of natural laws: the privileges and immunities, the estates and possessions, of the corporation, when once vested in them, will be for ever vested, without any new conveyance to new successions; for all the individual members that have existed from the foundation to the present time, or that shall ever hereafter exist, are but one person in law, a person that never dies: in like manner as the river Thames is still the same river, though the parts which compose it are changing every instant.

The honour of originally inventing these political constitutions entirely belongs to the Romans. They were introduced, as Plutarch says, by Numa; who finding, upon his accession, the city torn to pieces by the two rival factions of Sabines and Romans, thought it a prudent and politic measure to subdi

[ *469] vide these two into many smaller ones, by *instituting separate societies of every manual trade and profession. They were afterwards much considered by the civil law (a), in which they were called universitates, as forming one whole out of many individuals; or collegia, from being gathered together: they were adopted also by the canon law, for the maintenance of ecclesiastical discipline; and from them our spiritual corporations are derived. But our laws have considerably refined and improved upon the invention, according to the usual genius of the English nation: particularly with regard to sole corporations, consisting of one person only, of which the Roman lawyers had no notion; their maxim being that "tres faciunt collegium" (b). Though they held, that, if a corporation, originally consisting of three persons, be reduced to (b) Ff. 50. 16. 8.

(a) Ff. 1. 3, t. 4, per tot.

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