The plain import of this clause of the act, is to secure the creditors of the Company from any unjustice by the Company's dividing their effects so as not to leave a sufficiency for payment of its whole debts, and can never admit of the construction which has been attempted to be put upon it, as if the Company's debts could never exceed the sum of money subscribed to Government.----By the words principal or capital flock or flocks undivided, is plainly here to be understood the total funds and effects of the Company, which are in fact the capital upon which the Company does trade; and there would be the greatest absurdity in supposing, that in a case where the Company had in its warehouses goods and effects to the value of three times its debts, the debtors of the Company could have an action against the receivers of dividends, under pretence that the sum total of the Company's debts exceeded the sum total of the capital stock subscribed to Government, at a time when the Company's total goods and effects might, as at present, exceed its total debts, in such a proportion as not only to pay its whole debts, but also to repay its capital advanced, and leave five or six millions over of clear ballance to be divided amongst the proprietors. But if the words, principal capital stock or flocks undivided, could in this clause admit of the construction which is put upon them, yet certainly the words _sum total of debts_ can in that case be only understood to mean the ballance of debts after deducing the fair value of the Company's effects, other than its capital subscribed; and if the _debts_ are understood in this sense, viz. as the ballance of debts, there would be no inconsistency, that when the sum total of the ballance of debts exceeds the capital stock subscribed, that the receivers of dividends should be respectively answerable to pay the debts in proportion to what they receive, but unless the words, principal or capital stock or stocks undivided, or the words, sum total of debts are to be understood in the sense here affixed to them, the statute can not be explained so as to be agreeable to common sense or reason. By the act 6th Q. Ann. c. 17. § 2. it is provided, that for the better enabling the East India Company to raise and pay the sum of 1,200,000_l._ advanced to the publick, the common seal of the Company shall and may be made use of to borrow any sum or sums of money, from time to time, upon account of their united stock and funds, so as the sum total of all the principal monies which at any one time shall be owing upon the security of the said seal do not exceed 1,500,000_l._ over and above the monies which might lawfully be borrowed thereupon before the making of this present act.