1. _To be a Body Politic and Corporate, with perpetual succession._--This right has been confirmed by various succeeding Charters and Statutes. But there are some observations, which it is important to make upon this subject. The first Charter, granted by Queen Elizabeth, in 1601, to the first or London East India Company, created _both its corporate capacity and its exclusive privilege, to continue for a term of fifteen years_; but it provided, that, in case it should not prove beneficial to the Public, the _whole of the grant_ might at any time be determined, upon two years notice given to the Company. The succeeding Charters of James I. Charles II. James II. and William and Mary, conferred, in the same manner, both the corporate capacity and the exclusive privilege; and though they did not, like the former, fix a term for their duration, yet they rendered the _whole grant_ determinable upon three years notice. No provision is introduced into any of these Charters, to make the corporate capacity outlast the exclusive trade. When the principle of "_a more national, general and extensive trade to India_," declared in the Charter of the 5th of William and Mary, had been followed by the measure of creating a General Society of Merchants, and of erecting _a New Company_, the advocates for that measure took particular care to show, "That the Old Company, in reciting their Charters, had _forgot_ to mention the _provisos_ therein, viz. that the respective Kings of England, who granted them, reserved a discretionary power to _make them void_ on three years warning[9]." This observation did not apply to their exclusive privilege only, but extended equally to their corporate capacity; both being determinable by the same warning, because both were derived from the same grant, the whole of which grant was made liable to that determination, notwithstanding their corporate capacity was to enjoy "_perpetual succession_." Hence it is manifest, that the perpetuity conferred by the Charter was not perpetuity of exclusive trade, or political power, but of _corporate succession_. But perpetual succession in a body corporate, does not imply perpetuity of duration, but merely _uninterrupted_ succession of the individuals who compose it; which every corporate body must possess, whatever may be the term of its duration, in order that it may become, and may be able to perform the acts of, _a legal person_.