tants of the town and of the public at large. If a man lives in a street where there are numerous shops, and a shop is opened next door to him, which is carried on in a fair and reasonable way, he has no ground for complaint, because to himself individually there may arise much discomfort from the trade carried on in that shop.'

SUMMARY.

1. Mixed nuisances as they are termed are both public and private in their effects: Public, in that they produce injury to many persons or all the public; private, in that they produce a special and particular injury to private rights, which subjects the wrong-doer to indictment by the public, and to damages at the suit of persons injured.

2. In case of public nuisances, for the common injury there can be no redress save by indictment; but for every particular and special injury each person specially damnified may seek redress through the medium of a private action and by injunction, in certain cases, as well.

3. Rose v. Groves et al. (5 M. & G. (1843), p. 613), is an authority for the doctrine, that loss of trade by an obstruction in a navigable river, whereby access to plaintiff's inn was so obstructed, that divers persons, who would otherwise have come to the house and taken refreshments there, were prevented from so doing, was a sufficient special damage. to sustain an action and entitle him to a recovery.

4. The rule of Lord Holt, as to the particular damage required to sustain a civil action for a public nuisance, in these words: "If a highway is so stopped that a man is delayed in his journey a little while, and by reason thereof he is damnified, or some important affair neglected, this is not such a special damage for which an action on the case will lie, but a particular damage to maintain this action ought to be direct, and not consequential, as for instance, the loss of his horse, or by some corporal hurt, in falling into a trench in the highway," is too narrow. Both English and American cases shew that consequential damages are recoverable in the case of the private injury sustained from a public nuisance.

"5. It has been held in an American case, if by reason of an obstruction in a highway people are turned aside over one's lands whereby his crops are injured, the party sustain

ing damage may have his action against the person erecting the obstruction for the damage done, upon the principle that every man is answerable for all the probable or natural consequences of his wrongful act."-H. G. Wood.

"6. In England, by virtue of what appears to be a reactionary decision of the House of Lords, rendered in 1867, it seems to be law that the owner or occupant of premises near the highway cannot recover damages for an obstruction of the same, whereby his business is interrupted and his patronage diminished, Ricket v. Metropolitan R. W. Co. (L. R. 2 H. L. 175). But in this case the obstruction was a temporary one and was erected at some distance from the plaintiff's place of business. Subsequent decisions evince a tendency to limit this pronouncement of the Lords to the exact facts which called it forth, and it is well settled that where an obstruction materially impedes access to the plaintiff's place of business, or amounts to a blocking up of his doorway, an action will lie for the loss of patronage and for other damages thereby caused. Benjamin v. Storr (L. R. 9 C. P., p. 400."-Thomas Atkins Street.

"y. The authorities upon the subject of particular damage are not capable of being fully reconciled. We are convinced that the law here rests largely upon an artificial basis, and many of the decisions evince a tendency, as yet unconscious, perhaps, to reach a more solid foundation. The true doctrine seems to be embodied in the following propositions: (1) A man has no civil cause of action for the breach of a common right incident to a public nuisance. The remedy is by a criminal prosecution, the law inclining to the convenient, if not logical, view that the tort is swallowed up in the criminal misdemeanour; (2) But where an individual suffers actual damage which can be attributed to the nuisance he may recover, whether the damage be immediate or consequential, though of course, if the damage be so far consequential as to be remote, no cause of action would lie. In other words, in so far as a nuisance results in actual measurable damage to a particular individual it thereby and to that extent becomes as to him a private nuisance and is actionable as such."Thomas Atkins Street.

8. In Lambton v. Mellish (L.R. (1894), 3 Ch. 163), it was held, where the aggregate of the acts of persons acting independently amounts to a nuisance, each of them is severally

liable therefor, although the separate acts might not be actionable per se.

9. It was at one time supposed, if a person voluntarily moved into the neighbourhood of a nuisance, with the knowledge of its existence, this was sufficient to preclude relief; as if he knowingly took a house close to a noisy factory. This, however, is not the law. A business may be established in a section remote from active centres, which eventually may become a nuisance by subsequent growth in the neighbourhood.

10. A prescriptive right to carry on an offensive trade, in a particular locality, not amounting to a public nuisance, may be acquired by twenty years' adverse user. It was held in Mills v. Hall (9 Wend. (N.Y.) 315), a prescriptive right to maintain a public nuisance could not be acquired. Whether or not, a person exercising a trade or occupation, which is a public nuisance, can acquire a prescriptive right to carry on the same as against private or individual rights is a question not definitely settled.

St. John, N.B.

SILAS ALWARD.

THE CAPITALIZATION OF JOINT STOCK

COMPANIES.

The capitalization of joint stock companies is a matter that deeply affects the general public, but the general public, as a rule, is ignorant of or indifferent to matters of finance, and can be easily plucked without being conscious of the plucking. It becomes the duty, therefore, of those charged with the making of the Dominion and provincial laws to guard the common people by preventing oppression, deceit and extortion as far as it is within the power of legislation to accomplish that object.

The vast development in the commerce of the world during the past half century has been rendered possible by joint stock companies bringing together the surplus capital of many people into great concerns. Knowing definitely the extent of their liability, individuals are willing to take the defined risk and invest their money to create and carry on enterprises that are of infinite service to the locality in which they are situated and the community that they serve, and are of advantage to the world at large. It is right that

special privileges should be guaranteed by legislation to the shareholders of these companies. Without these privileges they would never have existed, and the great things they have done would never have been accomplished.

The financial liability of each general partner in a general partnership is unlimited, his entire assets are liable for payment of the debts and obligations of the partnership, and each partner, acting within the scope of the partnership, can bind his fellow partners to an unlimited extent. Each is the agent of the others. Legislation has provided in connection with all joint stock companies, incorporated either under the general Act or by special Acts, with the exception of banks, that the amount of stock for which he has subscribed is the full extent of the shareholder's liability, and that the shareholders in banks shall be liable. to the same extent and for as much more as the par value of the stock in the event of failure. No shareholder's act can bind another shareholder or make him in any way responsible.

Early joint stock legislation assumed that subscriptions to stock were intended to be paid in cash or in property measurably by cash, and that the net income earned would be a percentage of profit upon actual investment. The first divergence from this principle was the allotting of dividend stock, and later came the introduction of that which is known as "watered stock," which is the creation by a joint stock company of liabilities (to shareholders) against which there are no tangible assets. "Watered stock" has neither body nor soul, and might as well have been designated "wind stock." When the practice of issuing watered stock first began it was carried on covertly, surreptitiously. In these days no attempt is made to conceal its existence and it is openly advertised in newspapers and in prospectuses as a bait to effect sales of stock. So far as I can ascertain, gas companies in Chicago and New York were the first joint stock companies to resort to this method of deceiving the public and extorting, through this instrument of tyranny, excessive prices and exorbitant profits from consumers of their products. It is worth while to note here for commendation that the charter of the Consumers' Gas Company of Toronto prevents such manipulation. When the profit reaches a certain percentage of the actual capital that was paid by the shareholders in cash the

company is bound to reduce the cost of gas to consumers at the intervals when the conditions are ascertained, and, in consequence the consumers of gas in Toronto pay for it now only 75 cents per M cubit feet.

This is what the wicked American companies did. I quote:

"The gas companies are playing their usual tricks upon the consumers. In Chicago all the existing companies have agreed to combine. The capital actually invested in them amounts to about $10,000,000 but the amalgamation intends to water this up to $25,000,000, in order to conceal the size of the dividends yielded by extortionate rates. In New York the Consolidated Gas Company was established to swallow up the various companies then existing, which had invested $11,215.000; the capital has now been watered up to $39,078.000. The rule that should be enforced is, that corporations using such franchises should not be permitted. to water their stock, and that their profits should be restricted to a reasonable annual percentage of the money. actually invested."

Canadian banking companies have never issued "watered stock." The balance sheets of those that have failed in recent years contained fraudulent, and deceitful figures among the asset accounts, but such an account as "good will" or similar fictitious asset accounts, used to make debits against the issue of watered stock and about. as valuable as an inflated bladder, never appeared, and yet, there is not a business carried on in any line of trading or manufacturing in this country that can possess as "good will" anything to be compared in value with the custom. built up by a great Canadian bank.

The privileges conceded by legislation to the shareholders of joint stock companies should impose corresponding obligations and responsibilities upon them. They should not be permitted to use an instrument of tyranny to impose upon the public, increase prices by combinations, or prevent or restrain competition in trade. Over-capitalization, by the medium of watered stock, is, as practised in the United States, a greater instrument of tyranny over the people than the most cunningly devised scheme of extortion that was ever put in force by ancient despots. This instrument of imposition upon the people is now being used in Canada. I can prove the existence of combinations, in connection