Corporation

[Fr.; Lat. corporatio, from corpus.] A body politic or incorporate, so called as the persons are made into a body, and of capacity to take and grant, .; or it is an a embly and joining together of many into one fellowship and brotherhood, whereof one is head and chief, and the rest are the body, and this head and body knit together make the corporation; also, it is constituted of several members, like unto the natural body, and framed by fiction of law to endure in perpetual succe ion. The e ential character of a C. is that it has a legal existence as a person, under the name given to it by legislative authority, either by expre charter, or by prescription, which implies a charter. Of corporations, some are sole, some aggregate: sole, when in one single person, as a bishop, dean, parson, vicar, or the like; aggregate, which is most usual, consisting of many persons, as mayor and commonalty, dean and chapter, . Likewise, corporations are spir itual or temporal: spiritual, as bishops, deans, archdeacons, parsons, vicars, and other ecclesiastical persons; temporal, as mayors, aldermen, ., of towns and boroughs. Lay corporations are of two sorts, civil and eleemosynary. The civil are such as are erected for a variety of temporal purposes, as a mayor or commonalty, or the like, for the good government of a town: others, for the advancement and regulation of commerce, as banking, insurance, manufacturing, .; and others, for the better carrying on of divers special purposes, as colleges, academies, . Eleemosynary are such as are constituted for the perpetual distribution of the free alms or bounty of the founder to such persons as he has directed, or as the mode of government has been defined. Of this kind are all hospitals for the maintenance of the poor, sick, and impotent, and all colleges. Corporations, both sole and aggregate, may purchase, take, and hold land to them and their succe ors, as natural persons may hold them and their heirs. But aggregate corporations, when of the eleemosynary, or ecclesiastical, or municipal kind, and corporations sole, are in general restrained by statute from alienation of their lands, beyond the life of the person who constitutes the C. sole, or is the head of the C. aggregate. Power is neverthele given to them, in some cases, to grant long building-leases. Corporations aggregate may sue and be sued, and do all other acts, by their corporate name. Their corporate property only, and not the members individually, is amenable to judgments given against them. Their acts are under their common seal. There is perhaps not one country in the world where corporations are so numerous and so diversified as they are in America. The most important of them will be found in this work under their proper names. -A cant term for the human stomach and belly; as, that man carries a large corporation . (Eng.) - Vulgarly applied, also, to men who run as candidates for the office of alderman.