Further Thoughts on State Control of Joint Stock Enterprise1
| Published date | 01 October 1930 |
| Date | 01 October 1930 |
| Author | A. L. Dakyns |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1930.tb01994.x |
Further Thoughts on State Control
of
Joint Stock Enterprise’
.By
A.
L.
Dms,
M.A.
INCE
1844
there
has
in
this
country been a statutory limitation in
S
the size
of
all
partnerships
having
for purpose the acquisi-
tion
of-gain.”
The Kegistration Act
of
1844
limited membership to
25,
the Companies Act of
1862
to
20
(10
for banking).
Although the recent Companies Act repeats
this
provision (in
Section
357),
making it necessary for
all
associations
with
a
larger
membership to seek incorporation
as
companies, the clause remains
what
F.
W.
Maitland once described it as being-a
cn@t
mwfuum,
not
because
it
has
proved inoperative but because the economic
advantages which flow from incorporation are
so
considerable and
the terms
on
which it
can
be obtained are
so
easy, that there
has
been
no
occasion to enforce
this
part
of
the law against overgrown part-
nerships. Even as
long
ago
as
18go
the Registrar’s returns showed
that of all the companies registered in London during the
€irst
six
months of that year
26
per cent. had
less
than
15
members apiece.
Today
,
when private
”
outnumber
’
public
’
companies in the pro-
portion
of nine to one, those
with
less
than
twenty shareholders must
be
far
more numerous than those
with
more than twenty. Here at
least
is
negative evidence
of
the popularity of the company form of
organization in comparison with the ordinary partnership.
So
persistent in the ’nineties was the demand,
on
the part not only
of
small
firms
but
of
one-man businesses, for incorporation
with
limited liability, that company lawyers finally abandoned the view
entertained by
James
L.
J.
(vide
Baird’s case
in
1870
and Smith
u.
Anderson in
1880)
that a company is
a
kind of self-renewing or self-
perpetuating partnership. The other view that
a
company, once
incorporated,
is
If
like any other independent
person
with
its rights
and liabilities appropriate to itself
.
.
.
whatever may have been
the ideas and schemes of those who brought it into existence
”
was
finally established
in
1897
by the famous
decision
of
the House
of
Lords
in
the case of Saloman
u.
Saloman
&
Co. Ltd.
However
logical,
however legally sound
this
decision was (despite
the severe
shock
which it received during the war
in
the Daimler
~Prepioa~
article
by
Mr.
A.
L.
Dakyns
on
this
subject
see
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION,
July,
1930,
pgc
259
d
sq.-EDIfoE.
385
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