[c]."

[Footnote a: _Ff._ _l._ 3. _t._ 4. _per tot._]

[Footnote b: _Ff._ 50. 16. 85.]

[Footnote c: _Ff._ 3. 4. 7.]

BEFORE we proceed to treat of the several incidents of corporations,
as regarded by the laws of England, let us first take a view of the
several sorts of them; and then we shall be better enabled to
apprehend their respective qualities.

THE first division of corporations is into _aggregate_ and _sole_.
Corporations aggregate consist of many persons united together into
one society, and are kept up by a perpetual succession of members, so
as to continue for ever: of which kind are the mayor and commonalty of
a city, the head and fellows of a college, the dean and chapter of a
cathedral church. Corporations sole consist of one person only and his
successors, in some particular station, who are incorporated by law,
in order to give them some legal capacities and advantages,
particularly that of perpetuity, which in their natural persons they
could not have had. In this sense the king is a sole corporation[d]:
so is a bishop: so are some deans, and prebendaries, distinct from
their several chapters: and so is every parson and vicar. And the
necessity, or at least use, of this institution will be very apparent,
if we consider the case of a parson of a church. At the original
endowment of parish churches, the freehold of the church, the
church-yard, the parsonage house, the glebe, and the tithes of the
parish, were vested in the then parson by the bounty of the donor, as
a temporal recompence to him for his spiritual care of the
inhabitants, and with intent that the same emoluments should ever
afterwards continue as a recompense for the same care. But how was
this to be effected? The freehold was vested in the parson; and, if we
suppose it vested in his natural capacity, on his death it might
descend to his heir, and would be liable to his debts and
incumbrances: or, at best, the heir might be compellable, at some
trouble and expense, to convey these rights to the succeeding
incumbent. The law therefore has wisely ordained, that the parson,
_quatenus_ parson, shall never die, any more than the king; by making
him and his successors a corporation. By which means all the original
rights of the parsonage are preserved entire to the successor: for the
present incumbent, and his predecessor who lived seven centuries ago,
are in law one and the same person; and what was given to the one was
given to the othe