partake largely of
the character of ordinary partnerships. In the later Roman law the
distinction of corporations into civil and ecclesiastical, into lay and
eleemosynary, is recognized. The latter could not alienate without just
cause, nor take land without a licence--a restriction which may be
compared with modern statutes of mortmain. All these privileged
societies are what we should call _corporations aggregate_. The
_corporation sole_ (i.e. consisting of only a single person) is a later
refinement, for although Roman law held that the corporation subsisted
in full force, notwithstanding that only one member survived, it did not
impute to the successive holders of a public office the character of a
corporation. When a public officer in English law is said to be a
corporation sole, the meaning is that the rights acquired by him in that
capacity descend to his successor in office, and not (as the case is
where a public officer is not a corporation) to his ordinary legal
representative. The best known instances of corporation sole are the
king and the parson of a parish. The conception of the king as a
corporation is the key to many of his paradoxical attributes in
constitutional theory--his invisibility, immortality, &c.

The term _quasi-corporation_ is applied to holders for the time being of
certain official positions, though not incorporated, as the
churchwardens of a parish, guardians of the poor, &c.

The Roman conception of a corporation was kept alive by ecclesiastical
and municipal bodies. When English lawyers came to deal with such
societies, the corporation law of Rome admitted of easy application.
Accordingly, in no department has English law borrowed so copiously and
so directly from the civil law. The corporations known to the earlier
English law were mainly the municipal, the ecclesiastical, and the
educational and eleemosynary. To all of these the same principles,
borrowed from Roman jurisprudence, were applied. The different purposes
of these institutions brought about in course of time differences in the
rules of the law applicable to each. In particular, the great
development of trading companies under special statutes has produced a
new class of corporations, differing widely from those formerly known to
the law. The reform of municipal corporations has also restricted the
operation of the principles of the older corporation law. These
principles, however, still apply when special statutes have not