Page:Prerogatives of the Crown.djvu/148

 1 S8 Franchises. — Corporations. [Cli. VIII. corporation; but may give a general power by charter to erect a corporation indefinitely {a). The Chancellor of the Uni- versity of Oxford has by charter such a right, and has actually often exercised it in the erection of several matriculated companies now subsisting, of tradesmen Subservient to the students. His power is most frequently exercised in the case of eleemosynary or charitable corporations, when a licence is granted to a subject to erect such a corporation and to endow it with possessions or revenues, in which case the donor is called the founder. With respect to the mode of erecting such corporations, where there is a subject founder, this difference is to be observed: either the King expresses the words of the incorporation, designs the place, appoints the number, and gives them a constitution and a name by his charter, so that the corporation is complete; and then the founder or donor has nothing more to do than to make dota- tion, without any instrument comprehending any words of incorporation, for with that in such a case, the common person, who is the founder, has nothing to do; or the King, by his charter, may reserve as well the nomination of the persons, as the name and constitution of the corporation, to the person who is to be the founder ; then the latter must name the per- sons, and declare by what name they shall be incorporated, and what powers they shall exercise; and when he has done this, then they are incorporated by virtue of the King's letters pa- tent, and not by the common person, for he is but an instru- ment, and it is the King who makes the corporation in such case, in the same manner as if all had been comprehended in the letters patent themselves, according to the maxim that " qui per alium facit^ per se ipsum facere videtur (by* The incorporation ought in fact to precede the dotation, because, before the incorporation, there is no capacity to take as a corporation (c); but it is not necessary that in the letters patent the licence to incorporate and the licence to endow, should be in distinct independent clauses, or that the licence to incorporate should, in the order of expression, precede that (a) Bro. Ab. tit. Prerog. 53. Vin. Grant, 30. 2 Hen. 7, 13, a, b. 20 Ab. Prerog. 88. pi. 16. 1 Bla. Com. Hen. 7, 7. cited 10 Co. 33, b. 1 Kyd. 474. 51, 2. {b) 38 Edw. 3. U, b. 22Edw.4, (c) Vid. 10 Co. 26,b. to