upon which he had a veto.  There was an ordinary property qualification for voting, and religious liberty was guaranteed, except as to the papists.  Only one Parliament, as a matter of fact, assembled under this Instrument of Government, and the very first legislative function it endeavored to exercise seemed to offend Cromwell, who promptly dissolved it with a file of soldiers.  That was the end of constitutional government under the protector.  The laws of the Rump Parliament, and the Barebones Parliament, are entirely omitted from the official Statutes of England, and only to be found in a rather rare volume.  They mostly concern military affairs.  The real reforms of government, like the abolition of the Star Chamber and feudal tenures, had in fact been carried out under Charles I.

A further word should be given to the origin of the business corporation, an almost accidental event, which has affected the world of trade and affairs more than the invention of printing, of the bill of exchange, and the Law Merchant combined.  It would have been perfectly possible for the world to get on and do business without the modern corporation—­without the invention of a fictitious person clothed with the enormously powerful attributes of immortality and irresponsibility.  That is to say, men can act together or in partnership, but they are mortal, and at their death their personal powers end.  The corporation may be immortal, and its powers, as well as its acquisitions, increase forever.  Men are liable with all their estates for their contracts and obligations.  Men in corporations are only liable to the amount of their aliquot share of stock, or often not at all.  Corporations may dissolve, and be reborn, divide, and reunite, swallow up other corporations or often other persons.  Individuals cannot do so except by the easily broken bond of co-partnership.

Trading corporations for profit were practically unknown to the Romans, or even to Continental countries—­scholastic precedents and the Venetian commendam to the contrary notwithstanding.  They developed in England first out of the guild or out of the monastery; but the religious corporation, although regarded with great jealousy in the Statutes against Mortmain, which show that from the earliest times our ancestors feared the attribute of immortality that characterizes the corporation, have never had the principle of limited, or no, personal liability.  That, indeed, is said to have been invented by the State of Connecticut (see below, chapter 10).  They were, however, often clothed with monopoly.  In 1643 we find the Fellowship of Merchant Adventurers of England, a business corporation, with power to levy money on the members, and exclusive powers to trade in its own products, which seem to have been clothing and woollen manufactures.  We have already mentioned the earlier charter to the Eastland merchants.  Mr. James Bryce has pointed out to me that the objection of monopoly would not