be dissolved. Any particular member may be disfranchised, or lose his
place in the corporation, by acting contrary to the laws of the
society, or the laws of the land; or he may resign it by his own
voluntary act[i]. But the body politic may also itself be dissolved in
several ways; which dissolution is the civil death of the corporation:
and in this case their lands and tenements shall revert to the person,
or his heirs, who granted them to the corporation; for the law doth
annex a condition to every such grant, that if the corporation be
dissolved, the grantor shall have the lands again, because the cause
of the grant faileth[k]. The grant is indeed only during the life of
the corporation; which _may_ endure for ever: but, when that life is
determined by the dissolution of the body politic, the grantor takes
it back by reversion, as in the case of every other grant for life.
And hence it appears how injurious, as well to private as public
rights, those statutes were, which vested in king Henry VIII, instead
of the heirs of the founder, the lands of the dissolved monasteries.
The debts of a corporation, either to or from it, are totally
extinguished by it's dissolution; so that the members thereof cannot
recover, or be charged with them, in their natural capacities[l]:
agreeable to that maxim of the civil law[m], "_si quid universitati
debetur, singulis non debetur; nec, quod debet universitas, singuli
debent_."
[Footnote i: 11 Rep. 98.]
[Footnote k: Co. Litt. 13.]
[Footnote l: 1 Lev. 237.]
[Footnote m: _Ff._ 3. 4. 7.]
A CORPORATION may be dissolved, 1. By act of parliament, which is
boundless in it's operations; 2. By the natural death of all it's
members, in case of an aggregate corporation; 3. By surrender of it's
franchises into the hands of the king, which is a kind of suicide; 4.
By forfeiture of it's charter, through negligence or abuse of it's
franchises; in which case the law judges that the body politic has
broken the condition upon which it was incorporated, and thereupon the
incorporation is void. And the regular course is to bring a writ of
_quo warranto_, to enquire by what warrant the members now exercise
their corporate power, having forfeited it by such and such
proceedings. The exertion of this act of law, for the purposes of the
state, in the reigns of king Charles and king James the second,
particularly by seising the charter of the city of London, gave great
and just offence; though perhaps, in strictness of law, the
proceedings were sufficiently regular: but now[n] it is enacted, that
the charter of the city of London shall never more be forfeited for
any cause whatsoever. And, because by the common law corporations were
dissolved, in case the mayor or head officer was not duly elected on
the day appointed in the charter or established by prescription, it is
now provided[o], that for the future no corporation shall be dissolved
upon that account; and ample directions are given for appointing a new
officer, in case there be no election, or a void one, made upon the
charter or prescriptive day.
[Footnote n: Stat. 2 W. & M. c. 8.]
[Footnote o: Stat. 11 Geo. I. c. 4.]
THE END OF THE FIRST BOOK.