Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/900

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HARVARD LAW REVIEW
864

864 HARVARD LAW REVIEW less, it is well settled that a lapsed part of the residuary estate will not go to the other residuary legatees, but to the next of kin. Canfield v. Canfield, 62 N. J. Eq. 578, 50 Atl. 471. If, however, the gift is to a class, on the death of one, the survivors take the whole. Dresel v. King, 198 Mass. 546, 85 N. E. 77. Usually, a gift to a group consisting of persons connected by some com- mon tie, as "to all my nephews and nieces," is prima facie a gift to a class. Kingsbury v. Walter, [1901] App. Cas. 187. This presumption is strengthened in the principal case by the fact that the beneficiaries are grouped as residuary legatees. Smith v. Haynes, 202 Mass. 531, 89 N. E. 158. But where the bene- ficiaries are named, though they may constitute a class, it is generally held the gift is to the individuals distributively. Dildine v. Dildine, 32 N. J. Eq. 78; Sharpless's Estate, 214 Pa. St. 335, 63 Atl. 884. The words "share and share alike" also tend to indicate an intention to have an individual distribu- tion. Mofet v. Elmendorf, 152 N. Y. 475, 46 N. E. 845. Balancing these considerations, and with regard to the rest of the will, the court in the present case might well have foxmd as it did. BOOK REVIEWS The Position of Foreign Corporations in American Constitutional Law. By Gerard Carl Henderson, A.B., LL.B. Cambridge University Press. 1918. Mr. Henderson's essay will with English lawyers excite at once amazement and admiration. Their wonder will be caused by the subject with which the book deals. Most Englishmen have somehow become so accustomed to the existence of corporate bodies, whether English or foreign, that they no more think of any necessity for explaining or defining the nature of a corporation than of the need for a lawyer, at any rate, making up his mind what is the proper definition of a human being, any more than for settling how far soul and body are united together, and whether the soul can exist without a bodily form. To the ordinary barrister or solicitor in England these inquiries lie out- side his professional interests; some of them are questions which deserve the attention of clergymen; others are the study belonging to philosophers or metaphysicians. It will come as startling news to our practicing lawyers, to our leading solicitors, and, even one suspects, to a good number of our judges, to learn that the question, whether a corporation, e.g., the London and Northwestern Railway Company, is the creation of a legal fiction, or is as much an actual being as any living man or woman, occupies the attention not only of German jurists but also of the lawyers and the courts of the United States. No Englishman is surprised that any German should muddle his head over a futile controversy, for we all know that the Germans of today, and above all German professors, always think wrongly, and act wrongly. But English lawyers and judges are many of them astounded that the citizens of the United States, where, as we are inclined to believe, uprightness and good sense are as much developed as in England, should trouble themselves with futile controversies of what is popularly called a scholastic character. Difficult as it may be for leading English barristers fidly occupied in the lucrative practice of that lucid misrepresentation which wins the verdicts of juries, and occasionally perverts the judgments of courts, to believe that spec- ulations about the nature of corporate existence occupy in the United States, and have occupied for many years, the thoughts of successful lawyers and of some very distinguished judges, it is quite certain that questions as to the nature of corporate personality are constantly discussed, not only by the Law