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LIMITED LIABILITY IN PARTNERSHIP. GovERt...
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THE OLD AND THE NEW DEAN OF CHRISTCHURCH...
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IMPERIAL STOCK-JOBBING. The Paris corres...
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Limited Liability In Partnership. Govert...
LIMITED LIABILITY IN PARTNERSHIP . GovERttstEttT has made an important con cession to public opinion in consenting to in trodu . ce the principle of limited liability h partnership . That principle has long existe < in France under the name of partnership " ei commandite ; " and , without any special lav upon the subject , practically it may be said t ( exist in all commercial countries , Americf included . In fact , England is not only the exception to the rule , but the exception by £ specific interference with free trade . It is by the statute law of this country thai all the members of any establishment are liable to the full amount of their property , though that property be distinct from the firm , and though they take no part in the transactions of the house . This applies as much to distinct subscriptions , or even to loans , where there is any sharing of profit or loss , as it does to what is understood by real partnership ; and so difficult has it been for men to assist their friends in business under fcferms favourable to the recovery of the capital thus lent in case of risk , that a serious obstruction may be considered to have been continually enforced upon the available capital of the country . Notwithstanding the experience of a better law in other countries , however , the repeal of this invidious and mischievous class of enactments was opposed , on the ground that free trade thus applied would expose trade to dangers . There would be no confidence , it was said , in houses where members were not liable ; and firms would become imprudent if their members were not pledged to the whole amount of their own ' means . To a certain extent these arguments ¦ were true ; but the converse has also been eminently true . The law made many men prudent—ultra-prudent , perhaps—but it has made a still larger number reckless . It has driven capital out of ordinary business into railway speculations and foreign schemes . In fact , it has had the usual effects of all interference with the freedom of trade . "When ai'guments had been refuted it was easy to fall back upon the order of things , and to resist change because it was change . The partnership question was kept in the condition of a continual controversy , and those who were against the reform trusted that the public would thus be tired out . Not ¦ without some reason ; for it is possible to defer reforms by rendering their efficacy tedious ; and long experience in these things ought to make us Englishmen particularly aware of that cheap defence of almse . At last , however , the present Government lias conceded the principle . Bills arc introduced into the House of Commons for removing-the restriction to a certain extent . Joint-stock establishments are enabled to Secure a limitation of liability to the amount of the shares subscribed , if they fulfil conditions rendering that limitation sufficiently public ; and individuals aro permitted to acl-¦ vanco capital , whether to such limited undertakings or to others that are not limited , or to individuals , without thereby incurring tho liabilities of partnership . This is a great improvement ; but by a singular perversity , full Iialf tho valuo of tho measure is struck away l ) y confining its application to joint-stock companies with an aggregate capital of 20 , 000 ? ., and with shares of not less value than 251 . ; Irliich in as much as to say that restrictions shall bo removed from tho increase of capital and nssiistanco for tho rich , but that smnll cnpitnliatfl shall bo denied tho advantage ) ; although tho advocates of tho reform havo always kept in view tho peculiar claims of small capitalists . Amongst a numerous class of our own tenders , tho measuro as it stands will occasion ¦ ¦
blank disappointment . Ministers profess t ( be conceding the principle of limited liability - but they actually do not concede it at all t < - that numerous body . The position of some a of the working classes is peculiar . Manj i have laid by moderate sums of money , whicl i > they would desire to invest ; but while thf 7 facilities for investment have increased to th « 3 classes with better means , they have beer i positively diminished to the working classes , J As commerce concentrates itself in largei i undertakings , the smaller kinds of enterprise 3 are abolished . The working man may by ~ > chance buy a share , or part of a share . - in a railway ; but he must be driven to very , doubtful speculations in order to find any' thing that he can purchase . There only remains for him the savings bank . Besides this denial of an investment , he labours under another grievance . He mis' trusts the tradesmen of the class above him , and would like to take the business of trade more into his own hands . How can he do so ? He can effect it by clubbing his means with his fellows . Our readers are familiar with an instance in which some of them are actually engaged—the People ' s Flour Mill at Leeds ; an undertaking that has flourished conspicuously . The working classes , you say , can enter into undertakings of that kind . Not at all . The People ' s Mill was registered just in the nick of time ; a more rigid construction of the Friendly Societies Act would have excluded it ; and we doubt whether the working classes can imitate that partnership of limited liability . It was expected that the new measure would supply the deficiency ; but relief is still denied . ¦
The Old And The New Dean Of Christchurch...
THE OLD AND THE NEW DEAN OF CHRISTCHURCH . Dr . Gaisford , Dean of Christchurch , the best-known , if not the first of English scholars , has died in his seventy-seventh year . He Avas an excellent editor of Greek texts , though somewhat slavishly submissive to the authority of the manuscripts : a fault on the right side , but still a fault in cases where emendation is easy and obviously required by the sense . His text of Herodotus is considered by the Germans a " golden book . " The two volumes of notes to it are an unsaleable compilation . In fact , he made very few exegetical notes of his own , partly perhaps from modesty and excessive deference for the old scholars . He belonged to the Porsonian epoch ; but he showed little of Porson ' s taste or enthusiasm , and made no philological discoveries . We should rather compare him to his ally , Dindobf , but for Dinj > oiut's late vagaries in the way of emendation . We can scarcely say that he was justly preferred as Professor of Greek to Elms ley , who was certainly a man of more taste and genius . He was a great benefactor to the poor neglected lexicographers and grammarians , such as Heph ^ stion , Suidas , Pnocxus , and Cnomonoscus . We hope their shades will thank him in tho lexicographical district of tho Elysian Fields for a work which was somewhat thankless upon earth . Ho was Dictator of tho University Press , which he managed admirably in a commercial point of view , and raised from penury to affluence , in spite of his own JSuidasats and Chmrobosci , and tho still more onerous brochures of some of his theological friends . Wo hope that his successor in the Dictatorwhip will choose hits authors with a little less reference to their specific gravity , and a little more to the needs of the time . As a scholar nnd editor , which Avns his proper vocation , Dr . Gaisfoui ) did his work on earth honestly and well , and his laborious and unambitious ministrations to chianical literature entitle his memory to sincere
3 respect . As head of a great college , he , was totally and fatally misplaced , and the > college suffered accordingly . His manners , 3 which are euphemistically called Johnsonian , t were probably the result of his position i as an academical bashaw , and of want of j converse with the world . Those who knew } him best asserted that they concealed a nai turally kind heart . He was said to be not . unversed in polite literature of the old school . He was an influential , though taciturn mem-) ber of the old Hebdomadal Board , and had the sense and right feeling to accept a seat in the , Reformed Council , though he was himself a bitter opponent of Reform . His successor , the Uev . G-. H . LiddeIiIi , now head master of Westminster , will be restored from the somewhat uncongenial duties of a schoolmaster to his proper sphere , where we believe he will exercise a great and beneficent influence . He is an excellent ; scholar , and part author of the standard i Greek Lexicon ; but he is a philosopher and a divine as well as a scholar , and to his in-¦ tellectual powers and endowments he adds i great capacities for the government of men . ; The accession of such , a Head to the first I College in Oxford at this critical moment is an event of no slight importance . It may turn the wavering scale in favour of progress and reform .
Imperial Stock-Jobbing. The Paris Corres...
IMPERIAL STOCK-JOBBING . The Paris correspondents of the London press have lately been complaining that certain telegraphic despatches from the Crimea have been kept back , either wholly or in part , for some time after they have been known to have arrived at the Tuileries . The French journalists have also observed the fact ; a pardonable reticence has prevented them from commenting upon it . The oddest thing about the matter is , that the despatches in question are precisely those which , when they become public , exercise the liveliest influence upon the Bourse ; and , to make the joke perfect , it is generally found , when the news does come out , that some mysterious person or persons have operated upon the market to no inconsiderable extent . It is perfectly well-known that when Louis Napoleon lived in London , he got his living by doing a little stock-jobbing now and then ; and , as he Avas occasionally able to pick up a crumb of information through his acquaintances there and connexions abroad , he is generally supposed to have made a little money that way . At that time a Corsican named Oksi was employed by him , and it was in his name that tho transactions in Capel-court were carried on . That Corsican may now be daily seen very busily employed upon the Bourse and the Boulevards . The taking of Grenetchi was announced in London by the Secretary to the Admiralty in timo for late editions of tho morning papers ; but it was very kite in the afternoon , and just about tho cloao of tho Bourse , that the aqence Havas was soiling tho despatch as an important piece of intelligence to tho various journals of Paris . So well was this managed , that tho Prcsso of that afternoon said not a word about it . Durin « - the whole of that day tho transactions upon tho Bourse wore more than usually brisk . Any one . who walks into tho garden of tho Tiiilories and sees tho electric wires diverging from a small cabinet at the northern end towards every point of tho horizon ( looking like reins by which a single pair of hands may drivo tho world ) , will find it difficult to bol ' ievo that tho tenant of that cabinet could lm ' vo been ignorant ; of that important pioco
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), June 9, 1855, page 15, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_09061855/page/15/
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