[290]. The relation between a corporation and its beneficiaries may or may not amount to a trust in the proper sense of the term. A share in a company is not the beneficial ownership of a certain proportion of the company’s property, but the benefit of a contract made by the shareholder with the company, under which he is entitled to be paid a share of the profits made by the company, and of the surplus assets on its dissolution. A share is a chose in action—an obligation between the company and the shareholder. Colonial Bank v. Whinney, 11 A. C. 426.
[291]. Cornford v. Carlton Bank, (1899) 1 Q. B. 392; (1900) 1 Q. B. 22.
[292]. Reg. v. Birmingham and Gloucester Ry. Coy., 3 Q. B. 223; Reg. v. Great North of England Ry. Coy., 9 Q. B. 315.
[293]. As to the liability of corporations, see Salmond’s Law of Torts, § 18; Pollock’s Law of Torts, p. 60, 8th ed.; Cornford v. Carlton Bank, (1899) 1 Q. B. 392; Citizens’ Life Assurance Co. v. Brown, (1904) A. C. 423; Green v. London General Omnibus Coy., 7 C. B. (N. S.) 290; Abrath v. North Eastern Railway Co., 11 A. C. 247, per Baron Bramwell; Dernburg, Pandekten, I. sect. 66; Windscheid, I. sect. 59; Savigny, System, sects. 94, 95; D. 4. 3. 15. 1.
[294]. D. 3. 4. 7. 1.
[295]. It is a somewhat curious circumstance that the legal persons created by one system of law receive full recognition from other systems. This form of legal fiction has acquired extraterritorial and international validity. A French corporation can sue and be sued in an English court of justice as if it were a real person. The Dutch West India Co. v. Van Moses, 1 Str. 611; Newby v. Van Oppen, L. R. 7 Q. B. 293.
[296]. Calvin’s Case, 2 State Trials, at p. 624: “The King hath two capacities in him: one a natural body, being descended of the blood royal of the realm; and this body is of the creation of Almighty God, and is subject to death, infirmity, and such like: the other is a politick body or capacity, so called because it is framed by the policy of man; and in this capacity the King is esteemed to be immortal, invisible, not subject to death, infirmity, infancy.” As to the history of this idea see Holdsworth’s History of English Law, III. pp. 357–362.
[297]. Sloman v. Government of New Zealand, 1 C. P. D. 563. This was an action brought in England against the “Governor and Government of the Colony of New Zealand.” It failed because there was no such person or body corporate known to the law.
[298]. See Williams v. Howarth, (1905) A. C. 551.
[299]. The Commonwealth of Australia, for example, and also the constituent Australian states are now to be deemed for certain purposes bodies politic and corporate. For by virtue of Australian legislation they can now sue and be sued in their own names, and possess other attributes of personality; thus an action will now lie at the suit of the State of Victoria against the State of New South Wales. The corporate character thus bestowed upon these states, however, is concurrent with, and not exclusive of the old common law principle which identifies the state with the King. Public lands in Australia, for example, are still the lands of the Crown, except so far as they may be expressly vested in the corporate state by statute.