be allowable to set up a yard for building such vessels; it must be allowable to erect depôts at foreign ports for the receipt of goods; it must be allowable to employ commission agents for collecting such goods; it must be allowable to extend a mercantile organization all over the world. From making its own engines and carriages, a Company may readily progress to manufacturing its own iron and growing its own timber. From giving its _employés_ secular and religious instruction, and providing houses for them, it may go on to supply them with food, clothing, medical attendance, and all the needs of life. Beginning simply as a corporation to make and work a railway between A and B; it may become a miner, manufacturer, merchant, shipowner, canal-proprietor, hotel-keeper, landowner, house-builder, farmer, retail-trader, priest, teacher—an organization of indefinite extent and complication. There is no logical alternative between permitting this, and strictly limiting the corporation to the object first agreed upon. A man joining with others for a specific purpose, must be held to commit himself to that purpose only; or else to all purposes whatever which they may choose to undertake. But proprietors dissenting from one of these supplementary projects are told that they have the option of {94} selling out. So might the dissentients from a new State-enforced creed be told, that if they did not like it they might leave the country. The one reply is little more satisfactory than the other would be. The opposing shareholder sees himself in possession of a good investment—one perhaps which, as an original subscriber, he ran some risk in obtaining. This investment is about to be endangered by an act not named in the deed of incorporation. And his protests are met by saying, that if he fears the danger he may part with his investment. Surely this choice between two evils scarcely meets his claims. Moreover, he has not even this in any fair sense. It is often an unfavourable time to sell. The very rumour of one of these extensions frequently causes a depreciation of stock. And if many of the minority throw their shares on the market, this depreciation is greatly increased; a fact which further hinders them from selling. So that each is in a dilemma: he has to part with a good investment at much less than its value; or to run the risk of having its value greatly diminished.