C 4830 THE LAW AND PRACTICE --OF Joint Stock Companies UNDER THE CANADIAN ACTS. A practical treatise on the Law of Commercial Joint Stock Associations, in the form of and local; as also a number of forms relating BY CHARLES HENRY STEPHENS, Of the Montreal Bar. AUTHOR OF "THE QUEBEC LAW DIGEST." 16 TORONTO. CARSWELL & CO., LAW PUBLISHERS, C The restless and everchanging nature of that which we call "law" is, I take it, a sufficient justification now-adays for the appearance of a treatise on any legal subject; and that without pretending to advance any new theories respecting it. The science of law is essentially a practical one, and, in the use and pursuit of it as a profession, has little to do with speculations which have not directly in view the attainment of some practical end. To the practitioner theories are nought, precedents are everything. A single new point established by authority and placed in such a position that the young practitioner may readily discover and understand it, may be the starting point of a successful career. And if this be true of law generally, more especially is it true of that portion of it which relates to the affairs of Joint Stock Companies, the rules of which are, for the most part, born of expediency rather than of logic. Moreover while the law applied to corporations and companies is, in a general way, the same everywhere, it varies in many points of detail in different countries, and varies still more in this country from the fact that the authorization of companies and corporations is regulated by different statutory enactments in the different Provinces of the Dominion. |