§ The Lord Chancellormoved the second reading of the Trading Companies Bill.
Lord Broughamtotally objected to the bill which passed that House last year upon this very subject. It passed that House per incuriam without ever having obtained any consideration from the law lords, when the House was under the terrors of a dissolution, on their death bed, and, consequently with but little time to attend to their temporal concerns. A worse bill, and one which introduced more mischievous changes in commercial law, it would be impossible to frame. The bill gave power to the Crown, without an act of Parliament, to make one, two, or three persons in the country a trading company. The Secretary of State and the President of the Board of Trade, without any judicial advice or assistance, had it in their power, under the bill, to erect those persons into a trading company, and exempt them from the operation of the bankrupt laws, limiting their responsibility to a certain amount, contrary to the whole genius and spirit of the English law, and contrary to the genius and spirit of the constitution. Whether the principle of the French law of partnership, commandite, should be adopted in this country or not, was a question which had been much discussed, but all the great luminaries of political science were against it; and after what professor M'Culloch had said against it, he had come to the conclusion that if this principle was introduced into the English commercial law, it would be impossible to enumerate the evils which would follow its introduction. For these reasons he would do nothing whatever to extend the operation of the bill passed last year.
§ The Lord Chancellorsaid, that no opposition whatever had been offered to this bill in the House of Commons. It had certainly not passed without observation, but it had not been opposed. Whatever, however, might be the merits and demerits of the system of commandite, the present question was whether the present bill should or should not be permitted to pass in order to correct omissions and defects in the law as it stood.
§ The Duke of Wellingtonobserved, that he was not all satisfied with the bill which passed last year, and he wished that some discussion should take place on this bill.
§ Debate adjourned.