Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/484

 468 could neither frame, nor receive, any laws or rules of their conduct; none at leat, which would have any binding force, for want of a coercive power to create a ufficient obligation. Neither could they be capable of retaining any privileges or immunities: for, if uch privileges be attacked, which of all this unconnected aembly has the right, or ability, to defend them? And, when they are dipered by death or otherwie, how hall they transfer thee advantages to another et of tudents, equally unconnected as themelves? So alo, with regard to holding etates or other property, if land be granted for the purpoes of religion or learning to twenty individuals not incorporated, there is no legal way of continuing the property to any other perons for the ame purpoes, but by endles conveyances from one to the other, as often as the hands are changed. But, when they are conolidated and united into a corporation, they and their ucceors are then conidered as one peron in law: as one peron, they have one will, which is collected from the ene of the majority of the individuals: this one will may etablih rules and orders for the regulation of the whole, which are a ort of municipal laws of this little republic; or rules and tatutes may be precribed to it at it's creation, which are then in the place of natural laws: the privileges and immunities, the etates and poeions, of the corporation, when once veted in them, will be for ever veted, without any new conveyance to new ucceions; for all the individual members that have exited from the foundation to the preent time, or that hall ever hereafter exit, are but one peron in law, a peron that never dies: in like manner as the river Thames is till the ame river, though the parts which compoe it are changing every intant.

honour of originally inventing thee political contitutions entirely belongs to the Romans. They were introduced, as Plutarch ays, by Numa; who finding, upon his acceion, the city torn to pieces by the two rival factions of Sabines and Romans, thought it a prudent and politic meaure, to ubdivide thee two into many maller ones, by intituting eparate ocieties of Rh