Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/500

 484 prevent a defect of jutice. Alo it is aid, that if a founder of an eleemoynary foundation appoints a viitor, and limits his juridiction by rules and tatutes, if the viitor in his entence exceeds thoe rules, an action lies againt him; but it is otherwie, where he mitakes in a thing within his power.

IV. come now, in the lat place, to conider how corporations may be diolved. Any particular member may be difranchied, or loe his place in the corporation, by acting contrary to the laws of the ociety, or the laws of the land; or he may reign it by his own voluntary act. But the body politic may alo itelf be diolved in everal ways; which diolution is the civil death of the corporation: and in this cae their lands and tenements hall revert to the peron, or his heirs, who granted them to the corporation; for the law doth annex a condition to every uch grant, that if the corporation be diolved, the grantor hall have the lands again, becaue the caue of the grant faileth. The grant is indeed only during the life of the corporation; which may endure for ever: but, when that life is determined by the diolution of the body politic, the grantor takes it back by reverion, as in the cae of every other grant for life. And hence it appears how injurious, as well to private as public rights, thoe tatutes were, which veted in king Henry VIII, intead of the heirs of the founder, the lands of the diolved monasteries. The debts of a corporation, either to or from it, are totally extinguihed by it's diolution; o that the members thereof cannot recover, or be charged with them, in their natural capacities : agreeable to that maxim of the civil law, "i quid univeritati debetur, ingulis non debetur; nec, quod debet univeritas, inguli debent." may be diolved, 1. By act of parliament, which is boundles in it's operations. 2. By the natural death of all it's members, in cae of an aggregate corporation. Rh