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    LIMITED LIABILITY IN PARTNERSHIP . GovERttstEttT has made an important concession to public opinion in consenting to introduce the principle of limited liability in partnership . That principle has long existed in France under the name of partnership " en commandite ; " and , without any special law upon the subject , practically it may be said to exist in all commercial countries , America included . In fact , England is not only the exception to the rule , but the exception by a specific interference with free trade . It is by the statute law of this country that all the members of anv 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

    ferns 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 covmtry . 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 lias 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 .

    Wnen arguments 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 iss a great improvement ; but by a singular perversity , full lialf 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 25 / . ; Irliich in as much as to say that restrictions shall be removed from tho increase of capital and assistance for tho rich , but that sinnll cnpitnliHtH shall bo denied tho advantage ) ; although tho advocates of tho reform have always kept in view tho peculiar claims oi small capitalists . Amongst a numerous class of our own tenders , tho measuro as it stands will occasion

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    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 , Dindoef , but for Dinj > o kit ' s late vagaries in the way of

    emendation . We can scarcely say that he was justly preferred as Professor of Greek to Elm ' s ley , who was certainly a man of more tasto and genius . He was a great benefactor to the poor neglected lexicographers and grammarians , such as Heph ^ stion , Suidas , Puoclus , and Cnaaitonoscus . 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 or tho University Press , which he managed admirably in a commercial point of view , and raised from penury to affluence , in spite of his own Suidasas and Chairobosci , and tho still more onerous brochures of some of his theological friends . Wo hope that his successor in the Dictatorship will choose his authors with a little less reference to their specific gravity , and a little more to tho needs of the time . As a scholar nml editor , which was his proper vocation , Dr . Gaisfoiu ) did his work on oarth honestly and well , and his laborious and unambitious ministrations to classical literature entitle his memory to sincere

    respect . As head of a great college , he was totally and fatally misplaced , and the college suffered accordingly . His manners , which are euphemistically called Johnsonian , were probably the result of his position as an academical bashaw , and of want of converse with the world . Those who knew him best asserted that they concealed a naturally kind heart . He was said to be not unversed in polite literature of the old school . He was an influential , though , taciturn member 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 Ifcev . G . H . LiddeIiI ., 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 ant nor of the standard Oreeh Lexicon ; but he is a philosopher and a divine as well as a scholar , and to his intellectual powers and endowments he adds great capacities for the government of men . The accession of such , a Head to the first 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 .

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    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 Orsi was employed by him , and it was in his name that tho transactions in Capel-court

    were carried on . That Corsican may now Z > e daily seen very busily employed upon the Bourse and the Boulevards . The taking of G-enetchi 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 Presto of that aftenioon said not a word about if ; .

    _ , Durino- the whole of that day the transactions upon tho Bourse wore more than usually brisk . Any one who walks into tho garden of tho Tuilerica 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 ot hands may drive tho world ) , will find it difficult to bohVvo that tho tenant of that cabinet could uivo been ignorant of t'hat important pioce

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    blank disappointment . Ministers profess to be conceding the principle of limited liability , but they actually do not concede it at all to that numerous body . The position of some of the working classes is peculiar . Many have laid by moderate sums of money , which they would desire to invest ; but while the facilities for investment have increased to the classes with better means , they have been

    positively diminished to the working classes . As commerce concentrates itself in larger undertakings , the smaller kinds of enterprise 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 anything that he can purchase . There only remains for him the savings bank .

    Besides this denial of an investment , he labours under another grievance . He mistrusts 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 .

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    Ttrtm $ , 1865 . ] T Et B LEADBE , 54 £

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), June 9, 1855, page 543, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2094/page/15/