CORPORATION. A body, consisting of one or more natural persons, established by law, usually for some specific purpose, and continued by a succession of members.
"An artificial being created by law and composed of individuals who subsist as a body politic under a special denomination with the capacity of perpetual succession and of acting within the scope of its char ter as a natural person." Fietsam v. Hay, 122 Ill. 293. By fiction it is partly a per son and partly a citizen, yet it has not the inalienable rights of a natural person; Northern Securities Co. v. United States, 193 U. S. 200; 24 Sup. Ct. 436, 48 L. Ed. 679.
A corporation aggregate is a collection of individuals united in one body by such a grant of privileges as secures succession of members without changing the identity of the body and constitutes the members for the time being one artificial person or legal being capable of transacting the corporate business like a natural person. Bronson, J., People v. Assessors of Village of Watertown, 1 Hill (N. Y.) 620.
For a long time the prevailing theory on the Con tinent of Europe of the true nature of corporate bodies was that the personality of a corporation was a mere legal fiction, and its rights derived in every case from a special creation by the state. But Of late years writers of considerable authority have taken the view that the legal existence or person ality of a corporation, though limited in various ways, is quite as real as that of an individual; Pollock, First Book of Jurispr. 113, where various authorities are referred to, and the author expresses his belief that the latter view is sounder. The cor poration In England was the joint result of certain groups In ecclesiastical life and certain other groups active in temporal affairs. For centuries the de velopment of each was wholly Independent of the other. The boroughs first began to secure from the king franchises to hold their own courts, to their own customs and freedom from toll. A borough had two organizations—gild and governmental. They were connected, but not identical. The franchises were In the form of a grant from the king and were made to the burgesses. No legal person was created, but the burgesses died and their privileges were continued to their successors. When ual inhabitants of the borough offended the king by their acts, he took away the franchise of the borough as a punishment, which punishment fell on the community. Once in such a case the London
ers prayed that only the guilty might be punished; Riley, Chronicles 84. The king treated the bur gesses as a group and the burgesses in respect to their property acted as a group.
The same idea developed in ecclesiastical life. For wholly different reasons, religious groups were formed. The basic doctrines of the Christian church require co-operation and also continuity of thought and effort Monasteries, convents and chapters were the result. It became evident that this indefinite something produced by the association of several should be given a name and its status established. There was much blind groping after the nature of this indefinite something. For a time the idea naturally suggested by the analogy of the human body was applied to these groups. The chief officer, as the mayor or the bishop, was the head and the members were the arms, legs, etc. This was called the anthropomorphic theory and for a long time obscured the true corporate idea; I Poll. & (2d ed.) 491, and citations of the year books there given; 19 Harv. L. Rev. 350.
Finally, however, the oneness of these groups was given a definite recognition, not as a real, but as an ideal or legal person. The conception of an ideal person having legal rights and duties was bor rowed directly from the early English theory as to church ownership. In very early times, several centuries at least before the reign of Edward I., there were in England what were vaguely known as church lands. At first the land was given direct to God. Sometimes it was given to a particular saint, who was supposed to guard and protect It. Little by little, the saint and the buildings became merged in each other and the church itself was thought to be the property owner. The functions of ownership were necessarily performed by human beings—by the clergy—and the theory was natu rally extended to cases where there was only one cleric. Thus was introduced the corporation sole, oharacterized as "that unhappy freak of English law"; 1 Poll. & Matti. 488. In ecclesiastical affairs, the corporation aggregate was almost resolved into a mere collection of corporations sole; id. 507. See infra.