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143 the several possession of divided rights in one and the same thing, invariably leads to oppressive personal relations. It might therefore be advisable, if not necessary, for the State to prohibit the extension of such contracts beyond the lifetime of the persons concluding them, or, at least, to facilitate the means for effecting a real division of property, where such a relation has once arisen. To enter into fuller details to be observed in such an arrangement, does not come within my present design; and this is the less necessary when I consider that it should not be based so much on general principles, as determined by single laws, having distinct reference to single contracts.

The less a man is induced to act otherwise than his wish suggests or his powers permit, the more favourable does his position as a member of a civil community become. If, in view of this truth (around which all the ideas advanced in this essay properly revolve), we cast a glance at the field of civil jurisprudence, there seems to me, among other important objects, one that especially claims attention; I mean those societies which we are accustomed to denote as aggregate corporations. As they are always characterized by a unity, independent of the number of members who compose them,—a unity which, with unimportant modifications, maintains itself through a long series of years,—they produce in the end all those hurtful consequences which have been observed to flow from the practice of testamentary dispositions. For although, with us, much of their hurtfulness proceeds from an arrangement not necessarily connected with their nature,—namely, the exclusive privileges now expressly accorded them by the State, and now tacitly sanctioned by custom, and from which they often become real political bodies,—still they are essentially calculated of themselves to introduce many inconveniences. But these only arise when the nature of their constitution either forces on all the