could neither frame, nor receive, any laws or rules of their conduct; none at leaſt, which would have any binding force, for want of a coercive power to create a ſufficient obligation. Neither could they be capable of retaining any privileges or immunities: for, if ſuch privileges be attacked, which of all this unconnected aſſembly has the right, or ability, to defend them? And, when they are diſperſed by death or otherwiſe, how ſhall they transfer theſe advantages to another ſet of ſtudents, equally unconnected as themſelves? So alſo, with regard to holding eſtates or other property, if land be granted for the purpoſes of religion or learning to twenty individuals not incorporated, there is no legal way of continuing the property to any other perſons for the ſame purpoſes, but by endleſs conveyances from one to the other, as often as the hands are changed. But, when they are conſolidated and united into a corporation, they and their ſucceſſors are then conſidered as one perſon in law: as one perſon, they have one will, which is collected from the ſenſe of the majority of the individuals: this one will may eſtabliſh rules and orders for the regulation of the whole, which are a ſort of municipal laws of this little republic; or rules and ſtatutes may be preſcribed to it at it's creation, which are then in the place of natural laws: the privileges and immunities, the eſtates and poſſeſſions, of the corporation, when once veſted in them, will be for ever veſted, without any new conveyance to new ſucceſſions; for all the individual members that have exiſted from the foundation to the preſent time, or that ſhall ever hereafter exiſt, are but one perſon in law, a perſon that never dies: in like manner as the river Thames is ſtill the ſame river, though the parts which compoſe it are changing every inſtant.
The honour of originally inventing theſe political conſtitutions entirely belongs to the Romans. They were introduced, as Plutarch ſays, by Numa; who finding, upon his acceſſion, the city torn to pieces by the two rival factions of Sabines and Romans, thought it a prudent and politic meaſure, to ſubdivide theſe two into many ſmaller ones, by inſtituting ſeparate ſocieties of
