are not in general personally responsible for the acts, contracts, or defaults of the corporation, so long as the acts of the corporation are conformable to the powers which are given to it. This exemption from individual liability makes it very desirable for commercial and other trading companies to obtain charters of incorporation, by which the members escape the risk of ordinary partnerships.

7. The personal defaults or misconduct of the members cannot in general be visited on the corporate body.

The capacity of holding land is restrained by the statutes of mortmain, which make it necessary to obtain an express licence to that effect from the crown or the legislature. [MORTMAIN.]

With regard to the exemption from personal responsibility in respect of corporate acts, the members of the body cannot directly authorize an injury to be done to another under the sanction of a corporate act, without incurring the usual personal consequences. Thus, if a corporation should by an instrument under the common seal direct a trespass to be committed on a third person, every member of the majority who was present, and actually assenting to the act, would be liable in his private capacity.

The mode of filling up vacancies which occur in the constituent members of the corporate body, is determined either by the express provisions of the charter of incorporation, or (in the case of immemorial corporations) by ancient usage. The most common and regular method of maintaining the succession is by election. In the case of corporations sole the successor is appointed by the crown, or by a patron or founder. In the case of ecclesiastical corporations the forms of election are in many instances preserved, but the substantial right of nomination has long been exercised either by the crown or by some authority or person independent of the chapter or other corporate body.

With a view to ensure the performance of those duties, and a strict adherence to those regulations which are imposed upon corporate bodies either by the will of their founders or the general tenor of their charters, there are certain persons

and courts, whose office it is to exercise a power of superintendence and correction.

In the instance of eleemosynary bodies, as colleges, schools, and hospitals, the person so appointed is called a visitor, and is either the heir of the original founder, or some person specially appointed by him, or (in the absence of either of these) the king. [COLLEGIUM.]

In ecclesiastical corporations, the bishop of the diocese is, of common right, the visitor. His right of visitation formerly also extended over all the monastic establishments within the same district, unless the abbot or other head of the convent had purchased a papal bull of exemption, the effect of which was to subject him to the sole superintendence of the pope himself. With regard to lay corporations, such as municipal corporations, trading companies, and similar bodies, their irregularities are left for correction to the ordinary courts of justice, which have sufficient powers for that purpose. The Court of King's Bench exercises the authority by the writ of mandamus of compelling corporate bodies to do acts which they ought to do and neglect to do. A corporation may be extinguished in various ways.

1. A corporation aggregate may be extinguished by the natural death of all the members.

2. Where a select body of definite number, constituting an integral part of the corporation, is so reduced by death, or other vacancy, that a majority cannot be present at corporate meetings, the whole body becomes incapable of doing any corporate act, and, according to the better opinion, the corporation is thereby extinguished. This is the result of a rule in corporation law,-that every act must be sanctioned, not only by a majority of the number actually present at a meeting, but also at a meeting composed of a majority of each definite body into which the corporation has been subdivided by the charter. Thus, if a corporation consists of a mayor, twelve aldermen, and an indefinite number of burgesses, at least seven aldermen must be present at every meeting; nor can a legal meeting be convened in the absence of the mayor, except

for the purpose of electing a new one. The tendency of the rule is to compel the elective body to fill up vacancies without delay, and to secure the attendance of a competent number when the public business is transacted. The rule is inapplicable to a body of indefinite number, such as the general body of freemen; and it is liable to be modified and controlled by the charter, or other fundamental constitution of the corporation. The rule of the civil law, requiring the actual presence of twothirds of the corporation at elections, seems to have been dictated by a similar policy; but Sir W. Blackstone (Commentaries, vol. i. p. 478) is in error, when he supposes that a bare majority of the body so assembled could not bind the rest. (See Pancirollus, De Magist. Municip. apud Grævium.)

3. A dissolution may be effected by a surrender to the crown; at least where the incorporation is by charter, and where all the members concur and are competent

to concur.

4. A corporation may be forfeited, where the trust for which it was created is broken, and its institution perverted. Such a forfeiture can only be declared by judgment of the superior courts on process issued in the ordinary course of law, called, from the initial words of the writ, Quo Warranto, in which the fact of misuser, if denied, must be submitted to a jury.

5. A corporation may be dissolved or remodelled by act of parliament.

Having already alluded to the religious corporations of monks and other regular clergy formerly existing in this country, we may observe that the validity of the surrenders obtained by the crown at their suppression was deemed sufficiently doubtful to require the confirmation of an express act of parliament. Even then, in the opinion of the canonists, the spiritual incorporations still continued until sup. pressed by competent spiritual authority, and were capable of perpetuation, although their possessions were lost, and their civil rights extinguished. Hence it was that the Brigettine nuns of Sion, suppressed by Henry VIII., restored by Queen Mary, and again ejected by her successor, continued to maintain a migratory existence for two centuries and a half in Holland,

Belgium, France, and Portugal, and still claimed to be the same convent which Henry V. had founded on the banks of the Thames. (See letter of the Abbé Mann, 13 Archæologia.)

The corporations established for local administration of towns are now generally called municipal corporations. [MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS.] Bodies incorporated for the purpose of commerce, or the profitable investment of capital, such as railway companies, mining companies, banking companies, belong to the class of JOINT-STOCK COMPANIES, under which head they are treated of. Any number of individuals associated for purpose of traffic, who are not incorporated, form a partnership, and they are individually liable like the partners of any mercantile firm.

CORPORATIONS, MUNICIPAL.

[MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS.]

CORPORATION AND TEST ACTS. [TEST AND CORPORATION ACTS.] CORRECTION, HOUSES OF. [TRANSPORTATION.]

CORRUPTION OF BLOOD. [ATTAINDER.]

of

CORTES, the name of the assembly representatives of the Spanish nation. These assemblies have been variously constituted in different ages, and in the different kingdoms into which Spain was divided till the time of Ferdinand and Isabella. The cortes of Castile and Leon and those of Aragon were the principal. Considerable obscurity prevails as to the origin and the formation of both. The earliest national assemblies under the Visigothic kings met generally at Toledo; they consisted chiefly of the dignitaries of the church, and were called councils. After deciding all questions of church discipline, they deliberated upon temporal affairs, and in this stage of the discussion the lay lords or barons took an active part, and the king presented his requests. In the acts of the council of Leon, A.D. 1020, ch. vi., the transition from ecclesiastical to temporal affairs is clearly pointed out:-" Judicato ergo ecclesiæ judicio, adeptaque justitia, agatur causa regia, deinde populorum." In the acts of the council of Jaca, 1063, we find that several points of discipline

were reformed "with the consent of the | nobles and prelates;" and the signatures are those of the king, the infantes, nine bishops, three abbots, and three magnates; but it is added in a note that "all the other magnates had subscribed to the same acts." It is now generally acknowledged, that in that age, and down to the end of the twelfth century, there was no popular representation from the towns or commons of Castile and Leon in those assemblies. (Marina, Teoria de las Cortes; Sempere, Histoire des Cortes; Dunham, History of Spain and Portugal.) The people are said to have occasionally attended these national councils on some solemn occasions, as at the council held at Toledo in 1135, but only as spectators and witnesses, "to see, to hear, and to praise God." By degrees, as the towns rose into importance, and obtained local fueros, or charters, from the kings for their own security, or formed themselves into fraternities for their mutual protection against the Moors or against the violence of their own nobles, some of them obtained at last the privilege of sending deputies to the national councils, which were now styled cortes, because, according to some etymologists, they were held at the place where the king had his court. The cortes held at Salamanca by Ferdinand II., in 1178, consisted only of the nobility and clergy; but at the cortes of Leon, A.D. 1188, we first hear that there were present deputies "of towns chosen by lot;" and in the same year the cortes of Castile assembled at Burgos, where deputies from about fifty towns or villages, the names of which are mentioned, were present. How these places came to obtain this privilege is not known, although it is probable that it was by the king's writ or by charter. The cortes were henceforth composed of three estamentos or states, clergy, lords, and procuradores, or deputies from the enfranchised towns, forming together one chamber, but voting as separate estates. It was a standing rule, that general laws must have in their favour the majority of each estamento. This was the principle of the cortes of the united kingdom of Castile and Leon. The same principle existed in the kingdom of Aragon; only

there the cortes were composed of four brazos or estates, namely, the prelates, including the commanders of the military orders, the ricos hombres, or barons, the infanzones, or caballeros, who held their estates of the great barons, and lastly, the universidades, or deputies of the royal towns. These last are first mentioned at the cortes of Monzon, in 1131. The towns and boroughs in Aragon which returned deputies were thirty-one; but the number of deputies returned by each is not stated by the historians, any more than those for the cortes of Castile. We find the same town returning sometimes a greater, sometimes a smaller number, and at other times none at all, and a small town or village sending more deputies than a large one; while many considerable towns never returned any, independently of the seignorial towns, which of course had no representative privilege. How all this was made to agree with the manner of voting, in order to ascertain the opinion of the majority, is not clearly stated. The institutions of the kingdom of Aragon, which have been much extolled by some writers, appear to have been better defined than those of Castile, as the Aragonese, with the exception of the peasant serfs of the nobility, certainly enjoyed a greater share of individual liberty than the rest of the Peninsula.

In Castile, from the end of the thirteenth century, the popular estamento made rapid strides towards increasing its influence, being favoured in this by some kings or pretenders to the crown, such as Sancho IV. and Enrique II., or taking advantage of disputed successions and stormy minorities, to obtain from one of the contending parties an extension of their privileges. In 1295 the deputies of thirty-two towns and boroughs of Castile and Leon assembled at Valladolid, and entered into a confederacy to defend their mutual rights against both the crown and the nobles. Among many other resolutions, one was, that each of the thirty-two constituencies should send two deputies every two years to meet about Pentecost at Leon or some other place, in order to enforce the observance of their agreement. In 1315, during the frightful confusion which attended the minority

of Alonso XI., we find another confederacy between the nobles and the procuradores of 100 communities, with a similar clause as to deputies meeting once or twice every year. These meetings of deputies for special purposes ought not to be confounded with the general cortes of the kingdom, which were always convoked by the king, though at no fixed times. Enrique II., having revolted against his brother Pedro the Cruel, courted the support of the municipal towns, which at the cortes of 1367 demanded the admission de jure of twelve deputies into the royal council, which had till then consisted of hereditary nobles and prelates, with occasionally some civilian called in by the king. Enrique promised to comply with their request; but his brother's death having ensured his seat on the throne, he evaded the fulfilment of his promise by creating an Audiencia Real, or high court of appeal, consisting of prelates and civilians, and a criminal court of eight alcaldes chosen from different provinces of the kingdom. Juan I., who succeeded him, after the loss of the battle of Aljubarrota, created a new council in 1385, consisting of four bishops, four nobles, and four citizens, with extensive executive powers. The towns next solicited the dismissal of the bishops and nobles from the council, in order that it should consist entirely of citizens; but Juan rejected the demand. They also contrived at times to exclude the privileged orders from the cortes. Marina says that the privileged orders themselves, having lost much of their influence, abstained from attending the cortes; yet it is certain that although money might be voted without them, for the simple reason that they were exempt from taxation, the third estate alone paying all direct taxes, yet nothing else of importance could be decided without their concurrence. Although members of the privileged orders should not attend, they might be represented by proxy, as was the case in Aragon. Besides, the cortes were not all of one sort; there were general or solemn cortes, and especial cortes, for some particular purpose. Juan appointed by his testament six prelates and nobles as guardians of his infant son

| Enrique III., who were not, however, to decide in any important affair without the concurrence of six deputies, one from each of the cities of Burgos, Toledo, Leon, Seville, Cordova, and Murcia. The fourteenth century seems to have been the brightest period of popular or more properly municipal representation in Spain. The cortes were frequent, and the subject of their deliberations of the most important nature. But Spain had never a definite representation; to no meeting of this period did all or half the great towns send deputies; and those which did return them appear to have observed little proportion in the numbers. There can be no doubt that two ought to have been returned from each; yet in the cortes of Madrid, in 1390, we find that Burgos and Salamanca sent eight each, while the more important cities of Seville and Cordova sent only three; Cadiz only two; Oviedo and Badajos one; Santiago, Orense, Mondonedo, and other great cities of Galicia sent none at all. In fact, only forty-eight places returned deputies to these cortes, and the number, at the most, was inconsiderable. Incidentally we learn that in the assemblies of this period the archbishop of Toledo spoke for the ecclesiastical state, and the chief of the house of Lara for the nobles. Some of the deputies contended for the precedence in voting, as well as for that of seats. This rivalry was more conspicuous between Burgos and Toledo, until Alonso XI. found the means of settling it. "The deputies of Toledo," said the king in the midst of the assembly, "will do whatever I order them, and in their name, I say, let those of Burgos speak." The municipal corporations could boast of something more than the honour of returning deputies, an honour to which many of them were perfectly indifferent. Their condition was far superior to that of the seignorial towns, which for the most part groaned under the oppressions of the nobles. (Dunham, History of Spain and Portugal, b. iii. sect. 3, ch. ii.)

The remonstrances or petitions of the general cortes to the king generally began as follows:-"The prelates, lords, and caballeros of the kingdoms of Castile and Leon, in the name of the three estates