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Of the several species of guardians, the first are guardians by nature; viz., the father and (in some cases) the mother of the child. This guardianship is a mere personal right in the father or other ancestor to the custody of the person of the infant, until he or she attains twenty-one years of age. For if an estate be left to an infant, the father is by common law the guardian, and must account to his child for the profits. There are also guardians for nurture, which are the father, or, if he be dead, the mother, till the infant attains the age of fourteen years; a guardianship which, like that by nature, has no reference to the infant's property, but relates merely to his person.

Next are guardians in socage (an appellation which will be explained in the second book of these commentaries), called guardians by the common law; for when the minor is entitled to lands, the guardianship, by the common law, devolves upon his next of kin, to whom the inheritance cannot possibly descend. For the law judges it improper to trust the person of an infant in his hands who may by possibility become heir to him, that there may be no temptation, nor even suspicion of temptation, for him to abuse his trust. These guardians in socage, like those for nurture, continue only till the minor is fourteen years of age, for then, in both cases, he is presumed to have discretion, so far as to choose his own guardian.

For this he may do, unless a testamentary guardian be appointed by the father, by virtue of the statute 12 Car. II. c. 24.

The guardian so chosen, hence called by election, seems, however, to have no power beyond giving a consent to the ward's marriage; and the infant's election in no case supersedes the jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery. For the lord chancellor is, by right derived from the crown, the general and supreme guardian of all the infants in the kingdom; and will appoint a suitable guardian for an infant, where there is no other, or no other who will or can act. These guardians are treated as officers of the court, and are held responsible accordingly.

The Court of Chancery will also remove a guardian, however appointed, whenever sufficient cause can be shown for so doing. Its jurisdiction extends to the care of the person of the infant, so far as is necessary for his protection and education, and to the care of his property, for its management and preservation, and proper application for his maintenance. Upon the former ground the court will interfere with the ordinary rights of parents, as guardians by nature or by nurture; for when a father is guilty of gross cruelty to his children, or is in constant habits of drunkenness, or professes irreligious principles, or his domestic associations are such as tend to the corruption of his children, the court will deprive him of the custody of the

infants, appointing at the same time a suitable person to act as guardian, and superintend their education. This interference may be obtained on the petition of the infant himself, or of any of his friends or relatives; nay, a mere stranger may at any time set the machinery of the court in motion, the infant then becoming a ward in chancery, and under the special protection of the court. No act can then be done affecting the minor's person or property, unless under its direction, every act done without such direction being considered a contempt, exposing the offender to be attached and imprisoned. Thus it is a contempt to withdraw the person of the infant from the proper custody, or to marry the infant without the approbation of the court. For the court usually gives express directions how to exercise the powers which it has conferred; prescribes the residence, and settles a scheme for the education of the infant; and regulates, if necessary, his choice of a profession or trade; approves or prohibits the minor's marriage; and performs all the other duties of guardians by nature or for nurture.

A guardian ad litem, or, as he is in general termed, a prochein amy, or next friend, is one who is appointed by the court to prosecute the suit, or manage the defence of an infant. He has no authority over the infant's person or property, but is responsible for the costs of the suit.

There are also special guardians, such as guardians in gavelkind, whose authority does not cease till the infant attains fifteen years of age, and guardians by the custom of London and other places; but they are particular exceptions, and do not fall under the general law.

The power and reciprocal duty of a guardian and ward are the same, pro tempore, as that of a father and child; and therefore I shall not repeat them, but shall only add, that the guardian, when the ward comes of age, is bound to give him an account of all that he has transacted on his behalf, and must answer for all losses by his wilful default or negligence.

Let us next consider the ward or person within age, for whose assistance these guardians are constituted by law. The ages of male and female are different for different purposes. A male at twelve years old may take the oath of allegiance; at fourteen may consent or disagree to marriage, may choose his guardian, may be an executor, although he cannot act until of age, and at twenty-one is at his own disposal, and may alien and devise his lands, goods, and chattels. A female, also, at seven years of age, may be betrothed or given in marriage; at nine is entitled to dower; at twelve is at years of maturity, and may consent or disagree to marriage; at

fourteen may choose a guardian; at seventeen may be executrix, and at twenty-one may dispose of herself and her lands. So that full age in male or female is twenty-one years, which age is completed on the day preceding the anniversary of a person's birth, who till that time is an infant, and so styled in law.

Infants have various privileges, and various disabilities; but their very disabilities are privileges, in order to secure them from hurting themselves by their own improvident acts. An infant cannot be sued but under the protection, and joining the name, of his guardian, for he is to defend him against all attacks as well by law as otherwise; but he may sue either by his guardian, or, as we have already seen, by his prochein amy, or alone for wages in the county courts. In criminal cases, an infant of the age of fourteen years may be capitally punished; but under the age of seven he cannot. The period between seven and fourteen is subject to much uncertainty; for the infant shall, generally speaking, be judged prima facie innocent: yet if he was doli capax, and could discern between good and evil at the time of the offence committed, he may be convicted, and undergo judgment and execution of death, though he has not attained to years of puberty or discretion.

With regard to estates and civil property an infant has many privileges, which will be better understood when we come to treat more particularly of those matters; but this may be said in general, that an infant shall lose nothing by non-claim, or neglect of demanding his right, nor shall any other laches or negligence be imputed to an infant, except in some very particular cases.

CHAPTER XIV.

I. OF CORPORATIONS.

I. Corporations in general-Aggregate or sole-Ecclesiastical or lay-Civil or eleemosynary-How created-Their powers, privileges, and disabilities— How visited and how dissolved.

HITHERTO of persons in their natural capacities; but, as all personal rights die with the person, and as the necessary form of investing a series of individuals, one after another, with the same 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, which are called bodies politic, bodies corporate corpora corporata, or corporations. To show the advantages of such institutions, let us consider the case of a college founded ad studendum et orandum. If this was 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 frame nor receive any rules of conduct; none, at least, which would have any binding force, for want of a coercive power to create a sufficient obligation. Neither could they retain any privileges or immunities; for if such privileges were attacked, which of all this unconnected assembly would have the right or ability to defend them? And, when they were dispersed by death or otherwise, how should they transfer these advantages to another set of students, equally unconnected as themselves? So with regard to holding estates or other property, they could only continue the property to other persons, for the same purposes, by endless conveyances from one to the other, as often as the hands were changed.

But when united into a corporation, they and their successors are then considered as one person in law: they have one will, collected from the sense of the majority: this one will may establish rules for the regulation of the whole body, or statutes may be prescribed to it at its creation; 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 successors; 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 inventing these political constitutions is ascribed to the Romans; they were afterwards much considered by the civil law, in which they were called universitates, as forming one whole out of many individuals; or collegia, from being gathered together; and they were adopted also by the canon law, for the maintenance of ecclesiastical discipline. From them our spiritual corporations are derived, and the law of England now recognises several sorts of them.

Thus corporations are said to be aggregate, or such as consist of many persons united in one society; of which kind are the mayor and commonalty of a city, the head and fellows of a college, the dean and chapter of a cathedral. Corporations sole consist of one person only and his successors, in some particular station, who are incorporated by law, in order to give them some legal capacities and advantages, particularly that of perpetuity, which in their natural persons they

could not have had. In this sense the sovereign is a sole corporation; so is a bishop; so are some deans, and prebendaries, distinct from their several chapters, and so is every parson and vicar. For the parson, quatenus parson, never dies, any more than the sovereign. All the original rights of the Barsonage being thus preserved entire to the successor, the present incumbent, and his predecessor who lived seven centuries ago, are in law one and the same person, and what was given to the one was given to the other also.

Corporations are also ecclesiastical and lay. Ecclesiastical corporations are where the members that compose it are entirely spiritual persons; such as bishops, parsons, and vicars, which are sole corporations; and deans and chapters, which are bodies aggregate. Lay corporations, again, are either civil or eleemosynary. The civil are such as are erected for a variety of temporal purposes. The sovereign, for instance, is made a corporation to prevent the possibility of an interregnum; other lay corporations are erected for the good government of a town, and some for the better carrying on of divers special purposes; as the Colleges of Physicians in London, for the improvement of the medical science; the Royal Society for the advancement of natural knowledge; and the Society of Antiquaries for promoting the study of antiquities. The eleemosynary sort are such as are constituted for the perpetual distribution of the free alms, or bounty, of the founder of them, to such persons as he has directed. Of this kind are all hospitals for the maintenance of the poor, sick, and impotent: and all colleges, both in our universities, and out of them.

These are the several species of corporations known to our law. Of some of them, which possess peculiar qualities, and of others which have not all the usual incidents of a corporation, I shall treat separately; and with this view shall consider:-First, corporations in general; Secondly, municipal corporations; and Thirdly, trading corporations.

1. Corporations, by the civil law, seem to have been created by the mere act and voluntary association of their members: provided such convention was not contrary to law, for then it was illicitum collegium.

With us in England, the consent of the crown is absolutely necessary to the erection of any corporation, either impliedly or expressly given. The sovereign's implied consent is to be found in corporations which exist at common law, to which our former kings are supposed to have given their concurrence; of which sort are the sovereign himself, all bishops, parsons, vicars, and some others. Another method of implication, whereby the consent of the crown is presumed, is as to all corporations by prescription, such as the

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