since any one of the disputant parties, who is either dishonest or litigious, can involve the others at his pleasure in the expense, trouble, and anxiety, which are the unavoidable accompaniments of a Chancery suit, without their having the power of freeing themselves from the infliction even by breaking up the association.[1] Besides this, it required, until lately, a separate Act of the legislature before any joint-stock association could legally constitute itself, and be empowered to act as one body. By a statute passed a few years ago, this necessity is done away; but the statute in question is described by competent authorities as a "mass of confusion," of which they say that there "never was such an infliction" on persons entering into partnership.[2] When a number of persons, whether few or many, freely desire to unite their funds for a common undertaking, not asking any peculiar privilege, nor the power to dispossess any one of property, the law can have no good reason for throwing difficulties in the way of the realization of the project. On compliance with a few simple conditions of publicity, any body of persons ought
- ↑ Mr. Cecil Fane, the Commissioner of the Bankruptcy Court, in his evidence before the Committee on the Law of Partnership, says: "I remember a short time ago reading a written statement by two eminent solicitors, who said that they had known many partnership accounts go into Chancery, but that they never knew one come out.... Very few of the persons who would be disposed to engage in partnerships of this kind" (co-operative associations of working men) "have any idea of the truth, namely, that the decision of questions arising amongst partners is really impracticable.
"Do they not know that one partner may rob the oilier without any possibility of his obtaining redress? The fact is so; but whether they know it or not, I cannot undertake to say."
This flagrant injustice is, in Mr. Fane's opinion, wholly attributable to the defects of the tribunal. "My opinion is, that if there is one thing more easy than another, it is the settlement of partnership questions, and for the simple reason, that everything which is done in a partnership is entered in the books; the evidence therefore is at hand; if therefore a rational mode of proceeding were once adopted, the difficulty would altogether vanish." Minuted of Evidence annexed to the Report of the Select Committee on the Law of Partnership (1851), pp. 85-7. - ↑ Report, ut supra, p. 167.
