LIMITED AND UNLIMITED LIABILITY.

Definition. Partnership, in Political Economy, the voluntary association of two or more individuals for carrying on some business or undertaking in common, each deriving a certain share of the profits, and generally bearing a corresponding share of the loss arising therefrom.

The term partnership is commonly applied to those smaller associations—consisting usually of less than six, and not more than twenty persons—in which the partners personally conduct their joint affairs: the term company being applied to those great associations conducted by directors and servants appointed by the body of the partners to act for them, the latter having no direct concern in the management of the company's affairs.

1. Partnerships, whether the number of partners be great or small, are founded on that principle of association to which most great results may be ascribed. There are but few industrial undertakings that can be advantageously carried on without the co-operation of different persons. Many of them require a greater amount of capital than is usually at the disposal of individuals; and they almost all require a combination of various capacities and talents. And hence the advantage of uniting together to effect a common purpose. By the union of funds a sufficient capital is obtained. And when it happens, as is often the case, that those who contribute funds are without the peculiar skill or knowledge required to carry on the business, there are always parties to be found ready to supply this deficiency, and to contribute, as their share of the common stock, that science and practical knowledge which the others want, and which are indispensable in all undertakings. And the income of both parties being dependent upon, and proportioned to, the profits which the business yields, they have the most powerful motive to exert themselves, and to put forth all their energies. Nothing can be more beneficial than such an organization. It brings different classes of individuals into the most intimate relationship, elicits their peculiar talents, and makes them mutually serviceable. In a properly-constituted partnership or association, capital, science, and skill are blended in their due proportions; and by their combined action produce results that would otherwise be wholly unattainable.

It happens, indeed, that, like most other things, partnerships are sometimes productive of mischievous results. But these are occasioned either by their perversion or abuse. The public interest requires that the whole partners in a firm should be bound by the acts of any one of their number; so that the folly or fraud of a single partner may entail very serious consequences upon those associated with him. Generally, however, this is not an evil of frequent occurrence; and there can be no question that, both in a private and public point of view, partnerships are highly beneficial. And hence their multiplication. They have grown with the growth of commerce and industry,

---

1 Societas est contractus juris gentium, bona fide, consensu constans, super re honesta, de luci et damni communitate; quam inter possunt omnes liberum habere rerum sacrum administrationem. (Voet, Comm., lib. xvii., tit. ii., § 1.)

2 Ha pace coiri societatem non dubitare, ut alter pecuniam conferat, aliter non conferat; et tamen lucrum inter eos commune sit, quia neque opera aliquid pro pecunia valit. (Instit., lib. iii., tit. xxi., § 2.) and have been at once a cause and a consequence of the extraordinary extension of the businesses carried on by their agency.

To enter into anything like a full discussion of the law of partnership would very far exceed our limits. We shall therefore merely state a few of those leading principles with respect to it with which it is of importance that mercantile men, and the public generally, should be acquainted.

The mere consent of the partners, fixed and certified by acts or contracts, is quite sufficient to constitute a private copartnership; so that if two or more merchants, or other persons, join together in trade, or in any sort of business, with a mutual, though it may be unequal, participation in the profit and loss of the concern, they are in every respect to be considered as partners. If there be no provision to the contrary, each partner would share in the profits according to the value of his contribution to the stock of the partnership, whether it consist of money, goods, skill, or labour; and, under the circumstances supposed, each would share in the loss in the same proportion in which he would have shared in the profit, had there been any. But the proportion of gain or loss to be borne by the various partners may be varied in every possible way. No particular form of words or proceeding is necessary to constitute a partnership. It may be entered into either by an express written agreement, or by a merely verbal one. The former, however, ought in almost all cases to be preferred. The contract of copartnery should state the parties to it; the business to be carried on; the space of time the partnership is to continue; the capital, time, or skill which each is to bring into the common stock, or give to the business; the proportions in which the profit and loss are to be divided; the manner in which the business is to be conducted; the mode agreed upon for settling accounts at the dissolution of the partnership; together with the special covenants adapted to the circumstances of each particular case.

To constitute a partnership, there must be a participation in uncertain profits and losses;¹ and the true criterion to determine whether a party be a partner or not is, to ascertain whether the premium or profit he receives is certain and defined, or casual, indefinite, and depending upon the accidents of trade. In the former case he is not, and in the latter he is, a partner. A participation in the profits of any business or adventure, without a participation in the losses, constitutes a partnership so far as to render the individual so participating liable to third parties for the engagements of the concern, though, as between the parties themselves, it may be no partnership. Persons acting merely in the character of servants in any undertaking, such as seamen in the whale or seal fishery, and receiving as wages a sum proportioned to the profits made by their employers, are not partners.

If an individual, by his own act or inadvertence, allow himself to appear to the world as a partner, he is precluded from disputing the fact, even though he have no interest in the profits. A partner who withdraws from a firm is liable for its debts should the remaining partners continue his name in the firm, though without his consent, unless he take the necessary precautions to show that he has ceased to belong to it. (See p. 37.)

If there be no express stipulation as to the management of partnership business, the majority decide as to the disposition and conduct of the joint affairs of the firm; or if there be but two parties in a firm, one may manage the concern as he thinks fit, provided it be within the rules of good faith, and warranted by the circumstances of the case.

¹ A partnership in which all the profit is to go to one set of partners, and all the loss to the others, was called by the Roman lawyers a locum society (societas locumina), from the lion, who, though assisted by other animals in his hunting expeditions, took all the prey to himself. (Plautus, lib. I., Fab. 5.) Partnership.

One partner cannot, as such, bind another by deed, except in bankruptcy.

Partners, though they should act in a fraudulent manner as respects their copartners, bind the firm in all matters connected with its peculiar dealings. But this rule will not hold unless the strangers or third parties with whom a fraudulent transaction has been concluded, have acted bona fide. Any knowledge of, or participation in, the fraud on their part will vitiate and upset the transaction, and relieve the partnership from its responsibility. And though the fraud were not really known to the third party, yet, if the circumstances were such as ought to have led a man of ordinary discernment to suspect there was something wrong—that the partner with whom he was dealing had no authority to act for the others, or that the transaction had a suspicious character—it would be set aside. In such cases, excess of negligence or stupidity has the same consequences as connivance or guilty knowledge. "There is no doubt," said Lord Mansfield, "but that the act of every single partner, in a transaction relating to the partnership, binds all the others. But there is no general rule which may not be infected by 'covin,' or by such gross negligence as may amount or be equivalent to covin; for covin is defined to be a contrivance between two to defraud or cheat a third." (Smith, ubi supra, p. 41.)

Parties have frequently been not a little surprised to find that they were, unknown to themselves, partners in bankrupt firms, and, as such, responsible for their debts. Nothing is more common than for books to be printed and published, the publisher taking the risk of the publication and defraying its cost, the author getting for his remuneration half the profits, should there be any, which is not often the case. This, however, is clearly a partnership transaction. And in the event of the failure of a publisher who has published a work in the way now stated, the printers, paper-makers, binders, and others engaged in bringing it out, supposing their bills have not been paid, fall back upon the author, who, being a partner in the speculation, is bound to discharge their claims! Cases of this sort are not imaginary merely, but have occurred over and over again. This, indeed, is a matter in regard to which the writer of this article may truly say, "Haud inexpertus logor." And such being the risks which authors who enter into engagements of this sort have to encounter, they will do well, before embarking in them, carefully to inquire into the character and position of the publishers with whom their interests are to be associated.

The authority of a partner is revocable; and it is fully established that a disclaimer of the authority of the partners in any particular transaction precludes the individual by whom it is made from binding his copartners. Even during the subsistence of the partnership one partner may to a certain degree limit his responsibility; and if there be any particular speculation or bargain proposed of which he disapproves, he may, by giving distinct notice to those with whom his partners are about to contract that he will not be concerned in it, relieve himself from the consequences. Such notice would rebut his prima facie liability. The partnership would be suspended quoad this transaction. Thus, if a partner draw, accept, or indorse a bill or note, he will, in all ordinary cases, thereby render the firm liable. But, to use the words of Lord Ellenborough, "it is not essential to a partnership that every partner should have such power; they may stipulate among themselves that it shall not be done; and if a third party, having notice of this, will take such security from one of the partners, he shall not sue the other upon it, in breach of such stipulation, nor in defiance of notice previously given to him by one of them that he will not be liable for any bill or note signed by the others." (Galway v. Matthew, 10 East, 264.) And so in other cases.

When one of the partners has been made liable for the debts of the firm, he must seek his remedy in a rateable contribution against the others. Should one party enter into a smuggling or other illegal transaction on the partnership account, the other partners are liable for the duties and the penalty; and it is optional with the Crown to proceed against the real delinquent only, or against his partners. A bookseller or newspaper proprietor is answerable for the acts of his agent or copartner, not only civilly, but also criminally.

A partnership may be dissolved by the effluxion or expiration of the time during which it was originally agreed that it should continue. When it is formed for a single transaction, it is at an end as soon as it is completed. Partnerships may also be dissolved by death, agreement, bankruptcy, outlawry, &c. A court of equity will interfere to dissolve a partnership if a partner evince such gross carelessness or misconduct as would be ruinous to the firm, or would defeat the object for which the partnership was formed; or when a partner becomes insane, or is in such a state of mind as to render him permanently incapable of transacting the peculiar business of the firm; or where a partnership is formed for an impracticable purpose. Indeed, in all cases where even a partnership may be dissolved without the interference of a court of equity, it may be most prudent, if the dissolution be opposed by one or more of the partners, to file a bill praying a dissolution and account, and an injunction against using the partnership name.

When a partnership is dissolved by agreement, or one of the partners withdraws from it, public notice of the dissolution should be given in the London Gazette, and a specific intimation of the circumstances should be sent to all individuals accustomed to deal with the firm. Where such intimation has not been sent, an individual withdrawing from a firm may be made liable to third parties after he has ceased to have anything to do with it. He should also take care that his name is struck out of the firm; for if it be allowed to remain in it, strangers may suppose that he is still one of the partners, and he may thus be rendered responsible to them. A dormant partner, however, whose name has never been announced as belonging to a firm, may withdraw from it at pleasure without taking any step to disclose the dissolution of partnership.

It would, however, be expedient, in the view of getting rid of the serious inconveniences to which partners withdrawing from firms are sometimes subjected, and still more, of giving to the public that authentic information to which they are entitled, that the names of all partners in all partnerships, whether great or small, should be periodically published, and hung up in their places of business. Those who have to transact with firms, being in this way made aware of the individuals with whom they are really dealing, would act accordingly. But at present nothing may be known of these matters, or, if known, it may be by a few only; and there is no security whether, if inquiries were made regarding the matter, they would be truly answered. It is not by any means uncommon for firms to be continued under certain names long after the parties who bore them have ceased to exist, and without their having left either descendants or representatives of any sort in the business. And the designations A. B. & Co., A. B. C. & Co., and such like, are often assumed when in truth the Co. is a mere fiction. In these and similar cases the public is apt to be deceived, and to suppose that it is dealing with certain parties, when, in fact, it is dealing with totally different parties. But as such deceptions and ambiguities are uniformly mischievous, they ought to be put an end to, and firms proclaimed to be what they really are. We therefore are disposed entirely to approve of the principle of the bill introduced into Parliament during the session of 1858 (by Lord Goderich) for the compulsory registration of the partners in partnerships. The clamour that was raised against it was most unreasonable. It could make no improper disclosures; for if a man be ashamed of being in a partnership, the sooner he leaves it the better it will be for himself and all concerned. Neither did it interfere in any manner of way with the freedom of industry or of association, or lay any restriction on one thing or another. Its sole object was to let in light on a few dark places; to show who Messrs A., B., & Co. really were. It eliminated fictitious names, and disclosed real and sleeping partners; but it did nothing more. It made no suggestions and gave no directions. And we have yet to learn that any wrong could be done to any honest man by its disclosures, while the benefits of which they would be productive are many and obvious. We have no doubt that some measure having the same objects in view will be eventually carried. It is difficult to suppose that it should be objected to, except by those who desire to be in the dark because it affords greater facilities for the carrying out of sinister projects.

When the joint debts of a firm are paid, and the property duly distributed among the partners, the dissolution may be said, in a general sense, to be accomplished. If any one of the firm be guilty of a breach of duty in misapplying the effects before the concern is finally wound up, the proper course is, to apply to the Court of Chancery to appoint a manager.

Within a reasonable time after the death of a partner, the survivor or survivors must account to the representatives of the deceased; and if not willing to do so, a court of equity will compel him or them. In taking partnership accounts at the death of a partner, they must commence with the last-stated account, or, if there be none such, with the commencement of the partnership; and they must end with the state of the stock at the time of the partner's death, and the proceeds thereof until it be got in.

No notice is necessary to third parties of the death of a partner; the partnership is dissolved, and all liabilities for subsequent acts cease. The surviving parties are to be sued alone for the partnership liabilities and obligations, for which they are liable to the full extent. But they are not liable for the separate debts of the deceased partner, unless, after payment of the joint debts, they have a surplus of partnership effects in their hands.

Upon a dissolution by death, if the joint effects be insufficient to pay the partnership debts, the separate estate of the deceased partner, if he have any, is liable for the deficiency.

The statements now made may probably be sufficient to give our readers a tolerably distinct notion of the formation of partnerships, and of the more important rights, duties, liabilities, &c., arising out of such institutions. Those who wish to go deeper into the subject may consult Collyer's Practical Treatise on the Law of Partnership; Chitty's Commercial Law, vol. iii., pp. 22-269; Woolrych On Commercial Law, pp. 298-317; Smyth On Mercantile Law, 5th ed., pp. 19-56; &c.

II. Companies.—By a company, in commerce and the arts, is meant a copartnery or association of sundry (in Great Britain, at least seven) persons united together for the prosecution or carrying on of some lawful business or pursuit. The capital or joint stock of a company is greater or less according to circumstances; but whatever may be its amount, it is uniformly raised by the issue of such a number of shares of such magnitude as those interested may think expedient; the individuals enrolled in the books of the company as the holders of these shares being its partners. Owing, however, to the latter being in most instances very numerous, living at considerable distances from each other and being commonly engaged in other pursuits, it is impracticable for them personally to conduct the company's affairs. These are, in consequence, entrusted to the management of a board of directors, elected by, and responsible to, the shareholders. The latter, in fact, can do nothing individually. All their resolutions are taken in common, and are carried into effect by the directors they have chosen, and their officers. "In a private copartnery," says Adam Smith, "no partner, without the consent of the company, can transfer his share to another person, or introduce a new member into the company. Each member, however, may, upon proper warning, withdraw from the copartnery, and demand payment from them of his share of the common stock. In a joint-stock company, on the contrary, no member can demand payment of his share from the company; but each member may, without their consent, transfer his share to another person, and thereby introduce a new member. The value of a share in a joint-stock is always the price which it will bring in the market; and this may be either greater or less, in any proportion, than the sum which its owner stands credited for in the stock of the company." (Wealth of Nations, p. 335.)

According to the common law of England, all the partners in joint-stock companies, without regard to the magnitude of the shares held by them, are jointly and individually liable, to the whole extent of their fortunes, for the common debts of the companies. They may make arrangements among themselves limiting their liabilities with respect to each other; but unless established by authority competent to set aside the general rule, the partners are all indefinitely liable to the public. In some instances, however, Parliament interfered to limit the responsibility of the shareholders in joint-stock companies to the amount of their shares. And the act 6th Geo. IV., c. 96 empowered the Crown to grant charters of association to companies, the partners of which might be made liable to such an extent, and subjected to such regulations, as might be deemed expedient. And hence charters were sometimes granted for the purpose merely of enabling companies to sue and be sued in the courts of law, in the names of their office-bearers, without in anywise limiting or affecting the liability of the shareholders to the public. Such limitation was not to be implied by the grant of a charter, and was not held to exist unless it were distinctly set forth.

It is much to be regretted that the liability of the shareholders has been still farther interfered with, and that, in this respect, a very serious inroad has been made on the old law of the country. The act of 1855 (the 18th and 19th Vict., c. 133) authorizes the establishment of companies for the carrying on of most descriptions of businesses (banking and insurance were excepted), the liability of the partners in which may be limited to the amount of their shares. And hence it results, that in all cases in which these have been fully paid up, the partners are relieved of all responsibility, and are no longer liable for anything. Though the bankruptcy of the companies to which they belong may occasion the ruin of thousands, they cannot be called upon to contribute a single farthing to the relief of distresses that have most probably been caused by their misconduct!

Well might the highest authority who can be appealed to on such subjects charge this system with injustice; for, as he observes, "in the case of the insolvency of a concern, it removes a portion of the loss, which must be borne by some party, from those who have voluntarily engaged in the concern, who have had the means of watching and controlling its progress, and who would have been the sole participators in the benefits of its success, for Besides being vicious in principle, the law under which joint-stock companies are established is not a little confused and contradictory. Speaking generally, it may be said to be embodied in the act of 1856, the 19th and 20th Vict., c. 47, as amended by the act of the following year, the 20th and 21st Vict., c. 14. In the event, however, of a company being formed which requires peculiar or extraordinary powers,—such as the right to make roads or canals, to take up streets that gas or water pipes may be laid, and such like proceedings,—recourse must still be had to Parliament. But except in cases of this sort, the acts referred to are sufficient. And all partnerships or companies for ordinary industrial purposes, if they consist of more than twenty partners, must be established or registered under these acts, and made conformable to them; while, if they consist of seven and under twenty partners, they may be so established or registered; and in either case the liability of the partners may be limited to the amount of their shares, or be made or kept indefinite, as they may judge best. In like manner, banking companies with more than ten partners must, and those with seven and under ten may, be established, and must be registered under the act 20th and 21st Vict., c. 49; but, as already stated, the liability of the partners in such companies was not limited by the acts referred to. In addition to the clauses in the acts now mentioned as regulating the constitution of new and modifying that of old companies, there are others which relate to their voluntary and compulsory winding-up, their bankruptcy, &c. And, whether it were intended by Parliament or not, the effect of these statutes has been materially to modify the former indefinite liability of the partners in ordinary joint-stock companies. These associations have been, by a sort of legislative hocus-pocus, metamorphosed into incorporations; so that their funds only are liable to be taken in execution by their creditors. The rights of the latter have, in truth, been sacrificed without compensation or equivalent of any sort. A creditor cannot now, as he could have done three years ago, pounce upon any shareholder he pleased, and pursue him for payment of his debt, leaving to the shareholder to seek an indemnity from his copartners. When the funds of a company, supposing the liability of the partners to be unlimited, are insufficient to make good its engagements, a petition is presented to the Court of Chancery praying to have the company wound up. On this being done, the creditors can take no farther steps in the matter, but must wait the result. The court may order calls to be made sufficient to pay the debts due by the company. But this is always a very slow process; and if the creditors get paid in the end, which may be doubtful, it can only be after they have been kept out of their money for lengthened periods, most probably for a considerable number of years.

We do not suppose that regulations having such consequences are likely to be permanent. Their nature and influence were not declared, and were indeed very imperfectly known, and that only to a few members, when they were before Parliament; but the longer they are maintained, the more mischievous will they be found to be. It is not going too far to say, that the present state of the law in regard to the constitution, winding-up, and bankruptcy of joint-stock companies is more than discreditable, that it is disgraceful to the country. Had its object been to introduce fraud and recklessness into their constitution and management, and delay and expense into the legal proceedings to which they may give rise, it is doubtful whether it could have been materially improved.

But supposing that joint-stock companies are properly organized, that the liability of the partners is unlimited, and that creditors have every facility given them for getting payment of their debts, still there are only certain varieties of undertakings to which they can be advantageously applied. To insure a reasonable prospect of success to a company, the undertaking should admit of its being carried on according to a regular systematic plan. The reason of this is sufficiently obvious. The business of a great association must be conducted by factors or agents; and unless it be of such a nature as to admit of their duties being clearly pointed out and defined, the association would cease to have any effectual control over them, and would be in great measure at their mercy; and, however conscientious and anxious to do their duty, they want the powerful motives to act vigorously, prudently, and economically, by which private individuals engaged in business are actuated. "Like," says Adam Smith, "the stewards of a rich man, they are apt to consider attention to small matters as not for their master's honour, and very easily give themselves a dispensation from having it. Negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail more or less in the management of the affairs of such companies." It also not unfrequently happens that they suffer from the bad faith, as well as the carelessness and extravagance, of their servants; the latter having in many instances endeavoured to advance their own interests at the expense of their employers. Hence the different success of companies whose business may be conducted according to a nearly uniform system, and those whose business does not admit of being reduced to any regular plan, and where much must always be left to the sagacity and enterprise of those employed. All purely commercial companies trading upon a joint stock belong to the latter class. Not one of them has ever been able to withstand the competition of private adventurers; they cannot subject the agents they employ to buy and sell commodities to any effectual responsibility; and from this circumstance, and the abuses that usually insinuate themselves into every department of their management, no such company has ever succeeded, unless when it has obtained some exclusive privilege or been protected from competition.

And even with these advantages, such is the negligence, profusion, and peculation inseparable from the management of great commercial companies, that those that have had the monopoly of the most advantageous branches of commerce have rarely been able to keep out of debt. To buy in one market; to sell with profit in another; to watch over the perpetually occurring variations in the prices, and in the supply and demand of commodities; to suit with dexterity and judgment the quantity and quality of goods to the wants of each market; and to conduct each operation in the best and cheapest manner, requires a degree of unremitting vigilance and attention which it would be visionary to expect from the directors or servants of a joint-stock association. Hence it has happened, over and over again, that branches of commerce which proved ruinous... to companies have become exceedingly profitable when carried on by individuals.

"The spirit of monopolists," to borrow the just and forcible language of Gibbon, "is narrow, lazy, and oppressive. Their work is more costly and less productive than that of independent artists; and the new improvements so eagerly grasped by the competition of freedom are admitted with slow and sullen reluctance in those proud corporations, above the fear of a rival, and below the confession of an error." (Memoirs of his own Life, Miscellaneous Works, i., p. 49, ed. 1814.)

But though in all respects unsuited for the prosecution of ordinary industrial pursuits, whether belonging to agriculture, manufactures, or commerce, there are, as stated above, various undertakings for which joint-stock companies are peculiarly well fitted, and for which, indeed, they appear to be indispensable. The railways and canals which intersect most parts of the country; the docks and warehouses in our great seaports; the gas-works and water-works with which almost all our towns, whether great or small, are provided; and the greater portion of the public buildings and institutions by which they are embellished and the citizens amused and instructed, owe their existence to joint-stock companies. They are works that could not have been undertaken or completed except by the united capital and energies of great numbers of individuals; and being for the most part conducted on fixed principles, and according to a uniform system, their management, though not generally productive of much advantage to the shareholders, has, on the whole, been creditable to those concerned. It is not easy, indeed, to overrate the advantages which this country has derived from joint-stock associations, when applied to proper objects, and conducted by men of probity, skill, and caution.

The question in regard to the suitableness of joint-stock companies to conduct the business of banking has been frequently agitated, and is one of some difficulty. But as we have already treated this question at considerable length in the article Money, it is needless to resume the discussion in this place. Here it will be sufficient to observe, that much depends on the regulations under which joint-stock banks may be placed. And supposing that the unlimited liability of the partners is maintained and easily enforced, and that the bad faith or gross mismanagement of the directors is visited with suitable penalties, it is probable that the principal objections to joint-stock banks would be either removed or greatly diminished.

Partnerships with limited liability have been established in France, in the United States, and in other countries. In most cases they are subjected to peculiar provisions, but otherwise they may be instituted in a great variety of ways. Thus the responsibility of the partners may be limited to the amount of the sums which they have respectively contributed to the common stock, or to some multiple of these sums; and the power of the partners to interfere in the management of the company may be very variously regulated. The French call associations of this sort, partnerships en commandite. They consist of partners, or commanditaires, who are responsible only for the amount of their shares, and of a gérant, whose liability is unlimited, and who, at the same time that he is independent of the partners, has the entire management of the concern. These institutions have existed in France for a lengthened period, but it is only of late years that they have been widely diffused. Latterly, however, their increase has been such that it was stated in a speech made in the Corps Legislatif in 1856, that more societies en commandite are now established in a single year than had formerly been established in half a century or in ten years of the reign of Louis Philippe. And this extraordinary increase of these societies, and the abuses of all sorts with which vast numbers of them have been infected, have attracted a large share of the public attention to their constitution, and occasioned various efforts for its improvement. But it was admitted on all hands that, down at least to 1856, the efforts referred to had been wholly ineffectual for any good purpose, and that the public was very often defrauded by the fallacious representations that were put forth in regard to the state of partnerships, by the declaration of dividends when, in fact, there was nothing to divide, and all those fraudulent devices of which we have recently had such extensive experience. And such has been the influence of this state of things, that, despite the many prejudices in favour of the system, it is believed by some high authorities that its entire suppression would be desirable.

In the meantime, however, a new law, which was the subject of a great deal of discussion, was passed in 1856 (promulgated 23d July) for the regulation of partnerships en commandite. But though it be in various respects an improvement on the law which it superseded, there are no good grounds for supposing that either this act, or that any other possible act, will be able to prevent abuse. It limits the amount of the shares according as the capital of the society is above or below 200,000 francs; it directs that one-fourth part of the capital shall be paid up before the business for which it has been formed can be undertaken; and it vests the entire conduct of the business, whatever it may be, in the gérant, or manager chosen by the partners. Inasmuch, however, as it has been found that MM. les gérants have very frequently issued the most deceptive statements in regard to the companies to which they are attached, a committee of surveillance, consisting of five members, is to be chosen in each partnership, who are to verify les livres, la caisse, le portefeuille, et les valeurs de la société; and the gérant and the committee of surveillance are to be subjected to very severe penalties if they knowingly emit any false representations of the state of the society. They must be sanguine indeed who suppose that a clumsy contrivance of this sort can have any effect, unless it be to multiply all sorts of abuses, to increase "le grand nombre de mauvaises sociétés en commandite" that existed in France when it was established. And such, we are assured, is the case. What was bad in these societies in 1856 is much worse in 1858.

The French seem to suppose that by making the gérant... indefinitely responsible to the public, and independent of the company, they will obtain at one and the same time the advantages of individual enterprise and economy with the limited liability of the partners. But while these results are all but incompatible, the attempt to combine them seldom fails to have others that are highly pernicious. A manager who is really independent, and may conduct a company as he pleases without let or hindrance on the part of its members, is extremely apt to conduct it with a view mainly to his own interests, how much soever they may be at variance with those of his nominal constituents. To obviate this risk, the partners most commonly endeavour to select a manager on whose concurrence with, or subservience to, their views they think they may depend. And supposing them to succeed in this object, all the advantages said to be derived from the independence of the manager are at an end, and he becomes a mere instrument for carrying out the views of a clique of irresponsible partners. Hence in very many cases the gérants are in reality mere men of straw, directed by the disguised but well-understood hints or commands of the leaders of the association, who, secure in their non-liability, are enabled to gamble on a large scale, and to engage in any sort of adventure.

The limited liability companies established in this country are relieved from the foppery of legislation now adverted to. Except in the license given them to contract an unlimited amount of debt, without being liable for more than a limited and, it may be, an inconsiderable amount of shares, they do not in other respects differ from ordinary companies. They are managed by boards of directors, whose duties are the same in their case as in that of others.

In countries like France, where the people are mostly in narrow circumstances, and unaccustomed to, and afraid of, speculative enterprises, there may perhaps be some ground for permitting the formation of partnerships en commandite. And if they were confined to undertakings that admitted of being carried on according to a system of routine, such as railways, canals, fire and life insurances, gas-works, and so forth, we do not know that they would be open to much objection. But in a country like this, where capital is abundant, and where all enterprises, however hazardous, that promise anything like a reasonable return are eagerly undertaken, all extraordinary inducements to make capitalists come forward are unnecessary, and therefore objectionable. We admit, indeed, that in the case of companies of the special class now alluded to, though nothing be gained, there is no great hazard of much being lost by the shareholders being endowed with the privilege of limited liability. Such companies are not easily perverted to improper purposes; and though the capital of the shareholders may be unprofitably expended, yet, as it is most commonly laid out on visible, permanent, and sometimes valuable works, there is a fund on which the creditors, in the event of the concern failing, may fall back. But modifying circumstances of this sort have very rarely any place in companies formed for conducting ordinary industrial or commercial businesses. In their case the entire capital of the association may be lost or embezzled, without a farthing being left to the creditors. And it is, moreover, if anything can be, a contradiction and an absurdity to suppose that ordinary industrial pursuits can be so well managed by great associations of any sort, whether the partners be indefinitely responsible or not, as they will be by individuals or small associations. The latter act on their own account, and reap all the advantages of superior skill, attention, and economy, at the same time that they are indefinitely responsible for all the losses they may incur, and for all the mistakes into which they may fall, whether in the contrivance or the execution of their projects.

But though great public companies be unsuitable for the conduct of all save routine businesses, the fair presumption, or rather we should say, the certainty is, that those in which the responsibility of the partners is limited, will be much more unsuitable, and more productive of mischievous results, than those in which there is no such limitation. It must, indeed, be conceded, that despite the heavy responsibility under which the partners in ordinary associations or partnerships now act, they too often display an inexcusable degree of foolhardiness. But it is probable that the recent experience of the ruin that may result from placing too much confidence in directors will lead to an improvement in this respect, and that the character and conduct of these functionaries will be more carefully inquired into. Independently, however, of this circumstance, those who compare the number of associations which have been ruined by the bad faith, incapacity, or mismanagement of certain sets of directors, and the carelessness and misplaced confidence of others, will, after all, find that they bear but a small proportion to the total number of such associations. Bankruptcy and insolvency, though treated with infinitely too much indulgence, are still, speaking generally, very serious calamities; and, except when the partners have associated for sinister purposes, or when they have an overweening confidence in their managers, they seldom fail to inquire into the condition of the association, and to adopt such measures as may be judged needful to

he made the shareholders recompense him for the 'idea' by a grant of paid-up shares to the amount of L50,000. Part of the operations of the company was to buy up small livery stables; and the gérant made purchases in his own name, and sold them to the company for considerably more than he paid for them; in one case he made the company give him L50,000 for what cost him L36,000. The same tribunal has also had to condemn the gérants of another company, called the 'Lignéenne,' which professed to make paper from wood; its nominal capital was L160,000, and of that sum the gérants took L40,000 for a patent they brought into the concern, while they sold for their own advantage, and for whatever they would fetch, L40,000 worth of shares, and coolly embezzled all the money the shareholders paid in, and all that could be borrowed. In another case before a tribunal, it appeared that a brace of knowing gentlemen had entered into an arrangement with some bankers to palm off on the public, for L280,000 or L320,000, some forests and mines in some outlandish region on the banks of the Danube which they had purchased for L40,000. In another case it appeared that the gérants of a mining company near Alx-la-Chapelle deliberately sold to their shareholders mines for L400,000 which they were afterwards obliged to admit were worth only L60,000. It would be easy to cite other cases of recent occurrence in which revelations not less startling have been made, and the shareholders have been highly put to their trouble. However, be forgotten that a case more scandalous than any of them has yet to be brought before the courts—that of M. Prost, of Discount Bank notorily, who has defrauded his shareholders of many millions (of francs), and who has taken to flight. By the way, these shareholders had a general meeting a few days ago, and after a good deal of most vehement abuse of Prost and his 'Conseil de Surveillance,' they nominated a committee of five of their body to make a searching investigation into their affairs, in order to ascertain precisely to what extent they have been robbed.

Other companies en commandite there are which, though not falling or likely to fall into the hands of justice, have subjected the shareholders to grievous loss. I refer to those of which the shares during the speculating mania rose enormously high premiums, but which have now fallen to their true value. Thus the shares of the Messageries Impériales once obtained 1510 francs; they are now at about 550 francs. The shares of the company 'des Petites Vélocités' were, shortly after being issued, at 210 francs; they are now to be had for 70 francs. The shares of the Union Company once sprung up and were bought from 295 francs to 500 francs; and 65 francs is about the present quotation. People at one time were very glad to give 750 francs for shares in the Franco-Americaine Navigation Company; now they can have as many as they like for 30 francs. The Amalgamated Gas Company shares at one time were done at 1120 francs; yesterday they were at 720 francs. And the difference between the past and the present value of the shares of the famous Credit Mobiliar is known to everybody." improve its situation and prospects. This cautious surveillance is, of course, less manifested in great associations, where ordinary individuals feel that their efforts are apt to be of little avail; but even in their case it is always forcing itself into notice, while in smaller associations, or those comprising comparatively few partners, each being fully alive to his responsibility, exerts himself to obviate extravagance or mismanagement in the conduct of the business, and to make it a source of profit.

Without, however, insisting farther on these considerations, if parties will every now and then be careless of their interests, and forget or decline to adopt the necessary precautions to guard against abuse and loss when everything they have is staked on the result, their carelessness, it is obvious, will be immeasurably increased when they may limit their liability at pleasure, and speculate without any fear of the consequences. Can any one doubt that, under such circumstances, wild projects of all sorts will be very greatly increased; and that the number of those extensive bankruptcies which are productive of so much misery will be largely augmented? To suppose the contrary is to suppose what is plainly contradictory. It is equivalent to supposing that a man cares as much for L1,000 as for L5,000 or L10,000, or any greater sum; or is as anxious about a small part as about the whole of his fortune, how largesoever it may be.

It is obvious too, on the slightest consideration, that the facilities for organizing fraudulent and bubble companies have been greatly extended by the new system. A few half-employed attorneys, half-pay officers, and men upon town, with abundance of time on their hands and little money in their pockets, have no difficulty in establishing non-liability companies. They meet together and project an association for some purpose or other—it matters little whether it be practicable or not—which they affirm will yield a profit of some 10, 20, or 30 per cent, after all expenses are deducted. And having hatched their scheme and issued their prospectus, they sally forth to canvass for subscribers. They assure those to whom they address themselves that the project is sure to succeed; that their liability being limited, they run no risk; and as the shares are only some L20 or L50, of which not more than a half is required, they advise them as "friends" not to miss an opportunity, which is not likely to recur, of providing for their families, making themselves independent, or adding to their fortunes! And, what with this sort of blarney, the puffs and paragraphs of newspapers, and, above all, the legislative guarantee against risk, they seldom fail of accomplishing their object; that is, of becoming directors, secretaries, managers, and such like dignitaries. The reader must not suppose that this is an imaginary picture. It has been over and over again realized to the very letter in the getting-up of not a few of the non-liability companies that have been set on foot in England during the last two or three years. The affairs of some of them have already come before the courts of law; and if we took these for samples of the others, we should have to regard them as little better than mere swindling engines. But it would not be fair to conclude from the instances referred to that such was their uniform character. A good many have no doubt been honestly got up; and the greater number of these being for routine purposes, such as the supply of towns with water and gas, it may be assumed that they will be fairly conducted, and will succeed. But there are very many of a totally different character. And it would be childish to suppose that in any case the same consideration will be given either to their formation in the first instance, or to their future management, that would be given were the partners indefinitely liable. Hence, while the system operates to the prejudice even of the best schemes, it holds out every temptation to set on foot projects with the intention of deceiving and victimizing the public.

The contrivers of the new system tell us that, whatever it may really be, it is at all events popular with the public; and in proof of this, they refer to the great number of companies that have been already formed with limited liability. But no such reference was needed to enable any one to foresee that if a plan were set on foot to enable parties to contract debts without being bound to pay them, it would be eagerly grasped at. Gambling-houses are at present prohibited; but if they were to be licensed, does any one doubt that numbers of them would be opened in most considerable towns? And we should be told that this was a conclusive proof that the prohibition of gambling was disproved by the public, and that it required the healthy excitement furnished by the newly-opened places of entertainment! But whatever may be the case with this or that institution, one should think that the former facilities for swindling might have sufficed, without giving them further encouragement.

But however powerful the deleterious influence of the limited non-liability system (for such it is when the shares are paid liability) on the formation and conduct of companies, we are assured that it will be more than counterbalanced by the greater caution it will infuse into those who may deal with them, the public. The names and the number of shares held by the partners in such associations, and the magnitude of their capital, or of the "fund" to which their creditors have to look, are all to be made known; so that those who transact business with them will be really aware of what they have to depend upon. But we take leave to say that they will have no such knowledge. Suppose that a non-liability company had a capital of L50,000 or L100,000, and that it was wholly paid up when it was established; it may have been greatly reduced, or wholly lost, in the next or in any subsequent year; and yet, as the public can know nothing, or nothing certain, of its losses, and may, on the contrary, suppose it has been successful, its credit may not be impaired, and it may go on extending its business and adding to its obligations after it is really insolvent. Ordinary partnerships, unless they consist of parties of very questionable solvency or character, have seldom any considerable difficulty in obtaining large amounts of credit; and companies, it matters not of whom composed, which are reported to have some L10,000, L20,000, or L50,000 of paid-up capital, will be sure to obtain loans to a much greater extent and with still greater readiness. In their case we have a kind of authorized guarantee for the possession of wealth. And this, it will be said, precludes all room for distrust; so that, unless we had access to very peculiar sources of information, it might be not a little dangerous to question the solidity of such an association; though the whole thing may be a snare and a delusion. The assurance, whether official or otherwise, that a certain amount of capital has been paid up, is really not worth a farthing. But the chances are, that it will notwithstanding serve its purpose with the million. It will make that appear to them to be gold which may not even be copper, and enable parties without a shilling to borrow large sums, and to trade or speculate on the means of others. In such cases the public is helpless. There is nothing on which it can rely; and when the imposture is discovered by the bursting of the bubble, no one is to be responsible for anything.

However it may be accounted for, there is nothing that is so lavishly and inconsiderately bestowed as credit. Frequently, indeed, it is rather thrust upon than given to individuals and firms. And it would be ludicrous to suppose that this is a case in which we can place any dependence on the caution of the public. The only real security is in the discretion, good sense, and, more than all, in the unlimited liability of the partners. They know, or may know, what they are worth, and what they are about, which no one else can know. And in the vast majority of cases they farther know that they will be bankrupts and beggars unless they act prudently and circumspectly. Hence our late legislation is precisely the reverse of what it ought to have been. Instead of diminishing, we should have increased the responsibility of partners, by abstaining from all interference with their indefinite liability, and giving additional stringency to the bankruptcy laws.

That increased caution on the part of the public which it is said will be a result of the new system is really, therefore, no better than moonshine. It can have no practical influence. The only security which in such matters is worth a pinch of snuff consists in the responsibility of partners. It is not to those who deal with this or that house, but to the houses themselves—to the guarantees under which they have been placed—that we must look for protection against foolishness and fraud.

It may therefore be reasonably concluded, that in ordinary businesses,—that is, in all businesses for carrying on branches of agriculture, manufacture, or trade,—partnerships with limited liabilities can be neither more nor less than unmixed nuisances. If honestly conducted, they must fail in their competition with private parties; and if otherwise, they will only add to the means, which were already sufficiently extensive, of wasting capital and fleecing the public.

In the scheme laid down by Providence for the government of the world there is no shifting or narrowing of responsibilities, every man being personally answerable for all his actions. But the advocates of limited liability proclaim in their superior wisdom that the scheme of Providence may be advantageously modified, and that debts and obligations may be contracted which the debtors, though they have the means, shall not be bound to discharge. Borrow, say they, as much as you please, and pay as little as you like,—the less, it would seem, the better! And can it be doubted that the adventurous, the needy, the unprincipled, and the desperate, will be eager to avail themselves of such extraordinary privileges? The reckless speculation, and the consequent bankruptcy and ruin, that have on former occasions overspread the kingdom have been trifling compared with the revulsions which may be anticipated, should the new system be allowed to spread its roots and scatter its seeds on all sides. Even the soberest individuals may be tempted to embark in hazardous projects; for, by limiting the risk, they in great measure secure themselves against loss by failure, at the same time that they reap all the advantages of success. Were Parliament to set about devising means for the encouragement of speculation, over-trading, and swindling, what better could it do than to carry out the non-liability system?

But we shall perhaps be told that these results, though apparently probable, cannot happen, inasmuch as Parliament has provided, by the Joint-stock Companies Act, the 19th and 20th Vict., chap. 47, sect. 14, that in the event of the directors of a company declaring and paying a dividend when the company is known by them to be insolvent, they are to repay the same out of their own pockets. Perhaps the reader may be inclined to think that those who are disposed to trust to a security of this sort are rather easily satisfied. A body of directors who would, under any circumstances, declare a dividend when they knew that the concern over which they presided was bankrupt, will not be kept in the right path by the threat now referred to. The declaration of dividends when there is nothing to divide is not the way in which dishonest directors would be most likely to defraud their constituents and the public. They would make loans to each other, or if that be prohibited or apt to excite suspicions, they may do the same thing indirectly by the intervention of third parties. The capital and credit of the institution may be perverted, abused, and dissipated in a thousand ways before the circumstance becomes known to the public. And when the courts of law begin to inquire into the matter, they may probably find that the directors, like those of the Eastern Bank of London, have gone to enjoy themselves and repair their exhausted energies on the classic shores of the Mediterranean.

It is the merest delusion to suppose that anything, save the unlimited liability of the shareholders, can be made to afford even the semblance of an efficient check over the conduct of directors. And they no doubt may, and frequently do, fail to exercise that degree of surveillance over them which is as necessary for their own security as for that of the public. But if so, the fault is theirs, and there is no ground or reason why they should be permitted to escape from its consequences. The public have neither right nor power to interfere in the matter. Directors are the servants of shareholders, and they must answer, and, if needful, suffer, for their proceedings.

Some who are friendly to the principle of limited liability, but who are at the same time aware of the liability abuses to which it cannot fail to lead if the liability be unlimited, making it unlimited, have proposed to fix the liability at double or treble the amount of the shares; so that when a limited company failed, the subscribed capital of which had been fully paid up, the partners would not, as is now the case, be relieved of all responsibility, but would be obliged to make a further payment, if that were required, equal to the amount of their shares, or to double that amount, as might be decided upon. And this would undoubtedly be a very great improvement upon the existing system; for, while it would raise the character of the partners in limited associations, and make them more careful in regard to those they might choose for directors, and more disposed to watch their proceedings, it would make them contribute to the entire or partial relief of those whom they might otherwise have involved in total ruin. If, therefore, the system is to be continued, we should strongly recommend that the liability of the partners should be raised to at least double the amount of their shares. This would add to its solidity, and divest it of some of its worst features.

But, after all, this is only paltering with or mitigating an evil which should be cut up by the roots. Every sound principle is outraged when a man who has the means of paying his just debts does not pay them. Whether they are contracted by himself directly, or in company with others, is of no importance. He is in either case bound to pay them; and to pass laws to protect him in declining to pay them is to give a legislative sanction to dishonesty and villany.

It is alleged, however, that these representations are fallacious; that it is a manifest encroachment on the great liberty of the principle of the freedom of industry to hinder individuals from engaging in partnerships under such conditions as they may choose to lay down; that in the event of these conditions being publicly declared, and everybody made aware thereof, the most important statutes are often compiled. of what they are, they cannot be justly objected to; for as it is optional to deal or not deal with the association, those who dislike the conditions upon which it is established may keep aloof from it. But sophistry of this sort is too transparent to deceive any one, and might, in truth, be employed to excuse almost any sort of jugglery or delusion. The question is not whether limited liability be consistent with this or that abstract principle, but what are its practical results—what its probable influence over that public well-being, to promote which either is or should be the object of all legislation? It is with its operation in this respect, and with it only, that we have to deal. Publicans and carriers have made frequent attempts to limit or reduce their heavy responsibilities to those who make use of their services. But the great principle of public utility stood in the way of their claims; and they have not yet succeeded, and it is to be hoped never will succeed, in effecting their object; though ten times more may be said in favour of their exemption from indefinite liability than can be said in favour of the exemption of those engaged in ordinary businesses. If, indeed, there be one principle which more than another conduces to the public advantage, and may be said to constitute the foundation of all dealings between man and man, it is the obligation to discharge one's debts and obligations. And when such is the case, it is the bounden duty of government strictly to enforce the rule of unlimited liability, unless in cases, if such there be, when it can be clearly made out that the public interests will be better promoted by its relaxation or suspension. If a case of this sort be satisfactorily established, then undoubtedly the rule referred to should be waived in so far as it is concerned. But we entirely deny that, when tried by this test, it either has been or can be shown that partnerships en commandite are publicly advantageous. On the contrary, we have seen that they are in the last degree injurious, and that it is not possible they should be extensively introduced without giving an immense stimulus to fraud and reckless speculation.

In dealing with ordinary firms or associations, people trust, or believe they may trust, to the reputation for skill and integrity, and to the presumed wealth, of one or more of the partners. Such presumptions are not, indeed, always to be depended upon. In these, as in other matters, people may be misled by appearances, and may place an unmerited degree of confidence in earnest though insincere professions and promises. But how deceptive soever, the presumptions or indications referred to afford not merely the best, but the only guarantees that can really be had for upright conduct. Most people engaged in business, as hitherto carried on, are impressed with the well-founded conviction that their interests will be best promoted by their preserving an unblemished reputation; and when they act under the heaviest responsibility, the chances are ten to one that they will behave discreetly and honourably. But we have no such guarantees for the conduct of the partners of a society en commandite. Character is in their case of little, or rather of no consequence. Instead of being responsible, they are all, or may be all, but irresponsible. A, who is worth L50,000 or L100,000, has not more, perhaps, than some L1000 or L2000 vested in the society. Whether he lose or gain by such investment is a matter about which he probably cares very little. Most likely he has joined the association that he might engage, without fear or apprehension, in the boldest speculations. But whether this be or be not his object, it is an insult to common sense to suppose that associations of this description will be as carefully and skilfully conducted as those in which the partners are indefinitely liable for their proceedings.

It has been attempted to apologize for the non-liability system by referring to the usury laws, which permit loans to be made at any rate of interest and under a great variety of conditions. That, however, has evidently no real bearing on the matter. If A lend B a sum at 5, 10, or 15 per cent., it is the affair of the parties, and of none else. They enter into the transaction with a full knowledge of the circumstances, and believe it will be for their mutual advantage. There is, however, no limitation of risk either on the one side or the other. The business in which the loan is to be employed may not succeed, and the borrower may become bankrupt; but if so, his entire effects will be liable to the uttermost farthing for this and his other debts. He therefore has every motive to manage his business so that he may avert a catastrophe that would bring with it his inevitable ruin. But such would not be the case were B's liability limited; and it would be foolish to expect to have the conduct suited to one set of circumstances under a totally different set.

It would be the easiest thing imaginable, were it at all necessary, to corroborate the previous statements by illustrations drawn from the United States, where the principle of limited liability has been long established. But these must be familiar to almost all our readers. Everybody knows that, notwithstanding the peculiarly favourable circumstances under which the Americans are placed, from their free institutions, their enterprising character, the lowness of their public burdens, and the boundless extent of their fertile and unoccupied lands, bankruptcy is ten times more prevalent among them than in England. The revolutions by which we are sometimes visited, though sufficiently severe, are gentle in the extreme compared with those that periodically devastate the United States. In various instances, one of which is of very recent occurrence, every banking company in the Union has stopped payment, while great numbers have been totally destroyed. And it is the same with associations of all sorts. A spirit of over-trading, or a determination, at all hazards, to "go ahead," is universally prevalent, and bears there, as here, its legitimate harvest of bankruptcy and disaster. So much so, indeed, is this the case, and such and so violent are the convulsions referred to, that it is no exaggeration to affirm that monied fortunes and personal property are more secure in Austria and Russia than in the United States. The national character has suffered through this miserable system. Those reputations which have so justly damaged the credit of the Americans originated in their attempting to limit their responsibilities in their public as well as in their private capacity. And it could hardly, indeed, be expected that people who may contract debts to their neighbours which they are not bound to pay should be disposed to make an exception in the case of their foreign creditors.

We sometimes hear the rather unwarrantable assertion, that, unless their liability be limited, neither the poorer nor the richer classes are generally disposed to engage in extensive partnerships! But if it really had the effect of tempting the poorer classes to engage in them, that alone would be a very sufficient reason why all associations with limited liability should be suppressed. The condition of these classes will never be improved by withdrawing their attention from the businesses to which they have been bred, and in which they are engaged, to fix it on joint-stock adventures. The spirit of gambling and speculation is already quite enough diffused, without seeking to spread its baneful influence among the lower classes. Nothing should be done which it is possible to avoid to divert their attention from the pursuits of sober persevering industry. Their surplus earnings may be far more beneficially invested in savings-banks, in loans, and in contributions to friendly societies, than in joint-stock adventures.

And while, on the one hand, it would be very wrong to tempt by immunities of any sort the labouring classes to engage in such schemes, it is, on the other, quite superfluous in the case of their richer brethren. They are already much too prone to embark in them. Even in those businesses, the hazard of which is extreme, there is no good reason for exempting those by whom they are carried on from the fullest responsibility. If the demand for gunpowder were doubled, the supply would very shortly be increased in an equal degree. Wherever there is extra risk it is compensated by extra profits; and, practically, it is not found that the cost of gunpowder, or of any like article, is in any degree increased from capitalists being disinclined to face the hazard of its production.

Cautious men are content with moderate profits, and encounter only moderate risks; while those who are sanguine and adventurous, whether they be rich or poor, eagerly grasp at the highest profits, and to realize them do not hesitate to run the greatest hazards. Now, there is nothing surely to object to or amend in this. And yet the whole doctrine of limited responsibility proceeds on the contrary assumption—on the principle, if we may so call it, that profit and risk shall be divorced from each other; that speculators may undertake adventures, having, on the one hand, the chance of making unlimited profits if they turn out well, and, on the other, of escaping, though they may ruin others, with a comparatively trifling loss if they turn out ill. In that peculiar class of cases in which it would seem at the first blush of the matter that limited responsibility would be least objectionable, it will be found to be most pernicious; for it will give an unnatural stimulus to what certainly does not require it, that is, to hazardous enterprises and desperate adventures.

On the whole, nothing but mischief can be legitimately anticipated from the establishment of partnerships with limited liability, or en commandite. It was not by the aid of the principles which they involve, by shirking responsibility, and evading the risks inseparable from all undertakings, that we have attained to our pre-eminence in character, in wealth, and in manufacturing and commercial industry. But are we well assured that the adoption of a contrary system will not mark the era of our decline?

We have already seen that the limited liability system was not applied in the outset to the business of banking. But this exemption has been of short continuance, a law having been passed in the course of the present year (1858) authorizing banking companies, not issuing notes, to be established with limited liability. It was successfully alleged in defence of this measure that there should be no exception to the general rule; and that Parliament having introduced the system of limited liability into other businesses, was bound, in consistency, to extend it to banking. But if this sort of reasoning is to have any influence in such matters, it would not justify merely, but require, that the system should be extended to all companies, however small the number of partners, and even to all individuals.

Pascal, Blaise, one of the brightest names in the annals, not only of France, but of the human race, was born at Clermont in Auvergne, in the year 1623. He was not forty when he died. But the achievements which he crowded into his brief span of life, and which have made his name famous to all generations, may well make the world say with Corneille, "A peine a-t-il vécu; quel nom il a laissé?" From the earliest childhood Pascal exhibited most precocious proofs of inventive genius, especially in the department of mathematics. If we may believe a universally-received tradition, he had been purposely kept in ignorance of geometry, lest his propensity in that direction should interfere with the prosecution of other branches of knowledge. But in vain: his self-prompted genius, so it is said, discovered for itself the elementary truths of the forbidden science; and at twelve years of age he was surprised by his father in the act of demonstrating on the pavement of an old hall where he used to play, and with the

---

1 This biographical sketch is chiefly taken from the essay on the Life, Genius, and Writings of Pascal, inserted in the Edinburgh Review for January 1847. Some few additional paragraphs have been inserted, and the matter in general has been distributed differently, as well as abridged. For a fuller discussion of several important questions than would be possible in the limits of an article like the present, the reader is referred to the essay above mentioned. help of a rude diagram, traced by a piece of charcoal, a proposition which corresponded to the thirty-second of the first book of Euclid. At the age of sixteen he composed a little tractate on the conic sections, which provoked the incredulity and admiration of Descartes. At nineteen, he invented his celebrated arithmetical machine; at the age of six-and-twenty, he had composed the greater part of his mathematical works, and made those brilliant experiments in hydrostatics and pneumatics which have associated his name with those of Torricelli and Boyle, and stamped him as one of the first philosophers of his age.

Strange to say, he then suddenly renounced the splendid career to which his genius so unequivocally invited him, and abandoned himself to totally different studies. In part this was attributable to the strong religious impulse given to his character at this period,—rendered deeper no doubt by early experience in the school of affliction; for from the age of eighteen he was a perpetual sufferer, and in 1647, when only in his twenty-fourth year, was visited by a slight attack of paralysis. His ill health seems mainly to have been occasioned by his devotion to study; his mind, in fact, consumed his body. The impulse, however, which finally drove him from the world, and turned him into a religious recluse, seems to have been aided by incidents which occurred a few years later. It is said that a hopeless attachment (so M. Faugère plausibly conjectures) to the sister of his accomplished friend and patron the Duc de Roannes, but which Pascal, from timidity, never avowed to the object of it, increased his constitutional melancholy; but however this may be, a far deeper effect was produced by an escape from a frightful death in the year 1654. He was in a coach and four with some friends, and, in crossing the Seine over a bridge, part of the parapet of which was thrown down, the leaders took fright and leaped into the water; their weight as they fell happily broke the traces, and left the carriage free. But Pascal's nervous system received a shock which it seems never to have recovered; and he was often haunted with the thought that on the left side of him—that on which the danger threatened on this occasion—there yawned a deep chasm; nor could he, it is said, sit at ease unless fortified on that side by the sensation of some solid obstacle, though, strange to say, an empty chair would answer the purpose.

So complete was his abandonment of science that he never returned to it but on one memorable occasion, and then only for a short time,—namely, when he solved the remarkable problems relating to the Cycloid. The accounts which have been transmitted to us by his sister of the manner in which these investigations were suggested and completed—accounts which are authenticated by a letter of his own to Fermat—strongly impress us with the vigour and brilliancy of his genius. We are assured that after long abandonment of the mathematics, his attention was directed to the curve in question by a casual train of thought suggested in one of the many nights which pain made sleepless. His inventive mind rapidly pursued the subject till he reached the brilliant results recorded in his own writings; and in the brief space of eight days these difficult investigations were completed. Partly in compliance with the fashion of the age, and partly from the solicitation of his friend the Duc de Roannes, he concealed for a time the results at which he had arrived, and offered the problems for solution to all the mathematicians of Europe, with a first and second prize to successful candidates. If no solution were offered in three months, Pascal promised to publish his own. Several were forwarded, but as none, in the estimation of the judges, completely fulfilled the conditions of the challenge, Pascal redeemed his pledge, under the name of Amos Dettonville, an anagram of Louis de Montalte, the famous pseudonym under which the Provincial Letters had appeared. This was in 1658-9, when he was thirty-six years of age. With this brief exception, then, and which occurs quite as a parenthesis in his history, Pascal practically abandoned science from the age of twenty-six; yet he did not at once become a religious recluse. For some years he lived a cheerful, sometimes even a gay, though never a dissipated life, in Paris, in the centre of literary and polite society, loved and admired by a wide circle of friends, and especially by the Duc de Roannes. At length, however, under the influence of the causes before specified, his indifference to the world—perhaps we might say his disgust for it—so far increased that he sighed for solitude. This he sought and found at Port-Royal, already endeared to him as the home of his sister Jacqueline.

Here he produced his immortal Provincial Letters; and, when death cut short his brief career, was meditating an extensive work on the fundamental principles of religion, especially on the existence of God and the evidences of Christianity. For its completion he asked ten years of health and leisure! An outline of the work had been sometimes (and on one occasion somewhat fully) given to his friends in conversation, but no part of it was ever completed. Nothing was found after his death but detached Thoughts (interspersed with some on other subjects) on the principal topics appropriate to such a work. They were the stones of which the building was to have consisted, many of them unbewn, and some few such as the builder, had he lived, would no doubt have laid aside. The form in which the Thoughts were put together comported but too well with their fragmentary character. It appears that Pascal did not even use a common-place book; but when, after profound meditation, any thought struck him as worth recording, he hastily noted it on any scrap of paper that came to hand, often on the backs of old letters; these be strung together on a file, or tied up in bundles, and left them till better health and untroubled leisure should permit him to evoke a new creation out of this chaos. It is a wonder, therefore, that the Pensées of Pascal have come down to us at all. Never, surely, was so precious a freight committed to so crazy a bark. But we shall return to this subject when we come to criticize the writings of Pascal, for the literary history of the Pensées is not a little curious. The latter years of his life were spent in almost incessant suffering, not a little increased by the maceration and ascetic rigour to which he subjected a body but little adapted originally to sustain such severe discipline. After lingering in a long decay, through the clouds of which, however, his genius shone with undiminished radiance, even to its setting, he died at Port-Royal in 1662, at the early age of thirty-nine.

We now proceed to make a few observations on the genius and character of this great man. His was one of the rare minds, apparently adapted almost in equal measure to the successful pursuit of the most diverse departments of philosophy and science, of mathematics and physics, of metaphysics and criticism. Many have transcended him in knowledge; for Pascal followed the predominant law of all very inventive minds,—he was fonder of thought than of books, of meditation than of acquisition. Perhaps, also, the character of Pascal's genius was less exclusive than that of some other men. But in inventiveness few have been his equals; few even in mathematics, while in moral science, the science of man, we know of nothing out of Bacon and Shakspeare that will bear comparison in depth, subtlety, and comprehensiveness with some of the Thoughts of Pascal. But, in another characteristic of true genius, and which, for want of another name, we must call felicity, scarcely any one can, in the full import of the term, be compared with him. Endowed with originality the most active and various, all that he did was with grace. Full of depth, subtlety, brilliancy, both his thoughts, and the man- Pascal. net in which he expresses them, are also full of beauty.

His just image is that of the youthful athlete of Greece, in whom was seen the perfection of physical beauty and physical strength,—in whom every muscle was developed within the just limits calculated to secure a symmetrical development of all, the largest possible amount of power and flexibility in union.

In all the manifestations of Pascal's mind this rare felicity is exuberantly displayed: in the happy methods by which he lighted on truth and pursued scientific discovery; in the selection and arrangement of topics in all his compositions; in the peculiar delicacy of his wit, so strongly contrasted with all the ordinary exhibitions of that quality with which his age was familiar; and, above all, in that indescribable elegance of expression which uniformly characterizes his finished efforts, and often his most negligent utterances, and which even time can do nothing to impair.

In his scientific writings, the traces of this felicity may be discerned almost equally in the matter and the form. In relation to the first, there is probably a little illusion practised upon us. In reading his uniformly elegant and perspicuous exposition of his own scientific discoveries, we are apt to underrate the toil and intellectual struggles by which he achieved them. We know that they were, and must have been, attended with much of both,—nay, that his shattered health was the penalty of the intensity of his studies. Still, it is hardly possible to read his expositions without having the impression that his discoveries resembled a species of inspiration, and that his mind followed out the first germinant thought to its ultimate consequences with more ease and rapidity than is usually the case. One can scarcely imagine it necessary for him to have undergone the frightful toils of Kepler, had he been led into the same track of discoveries; and, in fact, whatever illusion his ease and elegance of manner may produce, we know that, comparatively speaking, his achievements were rapidly completed. It was so with the problems on the cycloid; it was so with his discoveries in pneumatics and hydrostatics. In fact, though his Traité de l'Équilibre des Liquides, and the one De la Pesanteur de l'Air, were not composed till 1653, they seem to have been only another form of the treatise he promised in his Nouvelles Expériences Touchant le Vide, published in 1647, and of which that tract was avowedly an abridgment. Indeed, as already said, Pascal had nearly quitted these investigations before the completion of his twenty-sixth year.

There was no scientific subject which Pascal touched in which the felicity of his genius, the promptitude and brilliancy of his mind, did not shine forth. We see these qualities eminently displayed in his Traité du Triangle Arithmétique, in the invention and construction of his arithmetical machine, in the mode of solving the problems respecting the cycloid,—in which, while employing Cavalieri's Method of Indivisibles, he proposes to remove the principal objection which had been made to it, by conceptions which bring him within a step of the Fluxions of Newton and the Calculus of Leibnitz. The same qualities of mind are eminently displayed in the manner in which he establishes the hydrostatic paradox, and generally in the experiments detailed in the Nouvelles Expériences, and the other connected pieces,—most of all in the celebrated crucial experiment on the Puy-de-Dôme, by which he decided the cause of the suspension of the mercury in the barometrical tube. As there are few things recorded in the history of science more happily ingenious than the conception of this experiment, so never was there anything more pleasantly naïve than the manner in which he proposes it in his letter to M. Perier. "You doubtless see," says he, "that this experiment is decisive of the question; and that if it happen that the mercury shall stand lower at the top than at the bottom of the mountain (as I have many reasons for thinking, although all those who have meditated on this subject are of a contrary opinion), it will necessarily follow that the weight and pressure of the air are the sole cause of this suspension of the mercury, and not the horror of a vacuum; since it is very certain that there is much more air to press at the base than on the summit of the mountain; while, on the other hand, we surely cannot say that nature abhors a vacuum more at the bottom of a mountain than on the top of it."

The usual felicity of his style is seen throughout his philosophical as well as his other works. They possess the highest merit which can belong to scientific composition. It is true that, in his purely mathematical writings, partly from the defective notation of his age, itself a result of the want of that higher calculus, the invention of which was reserved for Newton and Leibnitz, he is often compelled to adopt a more prolix style of demonstration than would have been subsequently necessary; but even here, and still more in all the fragments which relate to natural philosophy, his style is in striking contrast with the clumsy expression of the generality of contemporary writers. His Fragments abound in that perspicuous elegance which the French denominate by the expressive word netteté. The arrangement of thought and turn of expression are alike beautiful. Probably no one ever knew so well when to stay his hand.

But it is, of course, in his writings on moral and critical subjects that this felicity may be chiefly expected to appear; and here we may well say, in the eloquent language of M. Fauquère, it is a "style grand sans exagération, partout rempli d'émotion et contenu; vif sans turbulence, personnel sans pédanterie et sans amour propre, superbe et modeste, tout ensemble;" or, as he elsewhere expresses it, "tellement identifié avec l'âme de l'écrivain qu'il n'est que la pensée elle même, parée de sa chaste nudité comme une statue antique." By the confession of the first French critics, the Lettres Provinciales did more than any other composition to fix the French language. On this point the suffrages of all the most competent judges—of Voltaire and Bossuet, D'Alembert and Condorcet—are unanimous.

"Not a single word occurs," says the first, "partaking of that vicissitude to which living languages are so subject. Here, then, we may fix the epoch when our language may be said to have assumed a settled form." "The French language," says D'Alembert, "was very far from being formed, as we may judge by the greater part of the works published at that time, and of which it is impossible to endure the reading. In the Provincial Letters there is not a single word that has become obsolete; and that book, though written above a century ago, seems as if it had been written but yesterday." And as these Letters were the first models of French prose, so they still remain the objects of unqualified admiration. The writings of Pascal have indeed a paradoxical destiny,—flourishing in immortal youth, all that time can do is to superadd to the charms of perpetual beauty the veneration which belongs to age. His style cannot grow old.

When we reflect on the condition of the language when he appeared, this is truly wonderful. It was but partially reclaimed from barbarism; it was still an imperfect instrument of genius. He had no adequate models,—he

---

1 Descartes claimed the suggestion of this brilliant experiment. But it is certain that Pascal, who was the very soul of honour, repeatedly declares that he had determined to make it from the very time he had verified Torricelli's, and only waited the opportunity of performing it. On the other hand, Descartes was jealous of the discoveries of others, and, as Leibnitz truly observes, slow to give them all the praise and admiration which were their due. was to create them for others. Now, to seize a language in its rude state, and compel it, in spite of its hardness and intractability, to become a malleable material of thought, is the exclusive prerogative of the highest species of minds; nothing but the intense fire of genius can fuse these heterogeneous elements, and mould them into forms of beauty. As a proof, we have the fact that none but the highest genius has ever been equal to this task. Genius of less than the first order will often make improvements in the existing state of a language, and give it a perceptible impulse; but only the most creative and plastic power can at once mould a rude language into forms which cannot become obsolete—forms which remain in perpetuity a part of the current literature, amidst all the changes of time and the caprices of fashion. Thus it required a Luther to mould the harsh German into the language of his still unrivalled translation of the Scriptures, in which, and in his vernacular compositions, he first fairly reclaimed his native language from its wild state, brought it under the yoke, and subjected it to the purposes of literature. Pascal was in a similar manner the creator of the French.

The severely pure and simple taste which reigns in Pascal's style seems, when we reflect on those faults which more or less infected universal letters, little less than a miraculous felicity. One wonders by what privilege it was that he freed himself from the contagion of universal example, and rose so superior to his age. Taste was yet almost unfelt: each writer affected extravagance of some kind or other: strained metaphor, quaint conceits, far-fetched turns of thought, unnatural constructions,—these were the vices of the day; not so much perhaps in France as in England, but to a great extent in both. From all these blemishes Pascal's style is perfectly free; he anticipated all criticism, and became a law to himself. Some of his observations, however, show that his taste was no mere instinct; they indicate how deeply he had revolved the true principles of composition. His thoughts Sur l'Eloquence et le Style are well worth the perusal of every writer and speaker. In one of them he profoundly says, "The very same sense is materially affected by the words that convey it. The sense receives its dignity from the words, rather than imparts it to them." In another he says, "All the false beauties that we condemn in Cicero have their admirers in crowds." And in a third he admirably depicts the prevailing vice of strained antitheses: "Those," says he, "who frame antitheses by forcing the sense are like men who make false windows for the sake of symmetry. Their rule is not to speak justly, but to make just figures." The time spent on his own compositions shows that even such felicity as he could not dispense with that toil which is an essential condition of all perfect writing,—indeed of all human excellence,—and affords one other proof of the extreme shallowness of that theory which would have us believe that, to attain success, genius alone is all-sufficient. He is said, when engaged on his Lettres Provinciales, to have sometimes employed twenty days upon a single letter.

Another circumstance which, as already intimated, indicates Pascal's felicity of genius, is the peculiar delicacy and refinement of his wit. We say its delicacy and refinement; for the mere conjunction of great wit with great aptitudes for either philosophy or poetry cannot be considered as a felicity peculiar to Pascal. It is the character of that wit. The conjunction of distinguished wit, in one or other of its many forms, with elevated genius, is far too common to be regarded as a peculiarity of Pascal's mind. Paradoxical as the statement may at first sight appear to those who have been accustomed to consider wisdom and wit as dwelling apart, it may be doubted whether there is any one attribute so common to the highest order of mind, whether scientific or imaginative, as wit of some kind. Plato, Bacon, and Shakspeare may be cited as examples.

The wit of Pascal appears even now exquisitely chaste and natural—attired in a truly Attic simplicity of form and expression. In one quality—that of irony—nothing appears to us to approach it, except what we find in the pages of Plato, between whom and Pascal (different and even opposite as they were) it is easy to trace a resemblance in other points besides the character of their wit. Both possessed surpassing acuteness and subtlety of genius in the department of abstract science; both delighted in exploring the depths of man's moral nature; both gazed enamoured on the ideal forms of moral sublimity and loveliness; both were characterized by eminent beauty of intellect; and both were absolute masters of the art of representing thought, each with exquisite refinement of taste, and all the graces of language. The Greek, indeed, possessed a far more opulent imagination, and often indulged in a more gorgeous style than the Frenchman; or rather Plato may be said to have been a master of all kinds of style. But his dramatic powers, in none of his dialogues, can be greater than those which Pascal has displayed in his Provincial Letters.

The moral aspects of Pascal's character are as inviting as those of his intellect: here, too, he was truly great. Some infirmities indeed he had, for he was no more than man. He is nevertheless one of the very few who as passionately pursue the acquisition of moral excellence as the quest after speculative truth; who practically, as well as theoretically, believe that the highest form of humanity is not intellect, but goodness. Usually it is far otherwise; there is no sort of proportion between the diligence and assiduity which men are ordinarily willing to expend on their intellectual and their moral culture. Nor is it less than an indication of something wrong about human nature, a symptom of spiritual disease, that of those three distinct orders of greatness which Pascal has so exquisitely discriminated in his Pensées—Power, Intellect, and Goodness—the admiration inspired by the two first should be so much greater than that inspired by the last.

Few men have ever dwelt on the ideal of moral perfection, or sought to realize its image in themselves, with more ardour than Pascal; not always, indeed (as regards the mode), with as much wisdom as ardour. Yet upon all the great features of his moral character one dwells with the serenest delight. Much as he is to be admired, he is yet more to be loved. His humility and simplicity, conspicuous as his genius and acquisitions, were those of a very child. The favourite of science, often crowned, as an old Greek might have said of some distinguished young hero at Olympia, with the fairest laurels of the successful mathematician and the unrivalled polemic,—making discoveries even in his youth which would have intoxicated many men to madness,—neither pride nor vanity found admission to his heart. Philosophy and science produced on him only their proper effect; and taught him, not how much he knew, but how little,—not merely what he had attained, but of how much more he was ignorant. His perfect love of truth was beautifully blended with the gentlest charity, and his contempt of fraud and sophistry never made him forget, while indignantly exposing them, the courtesies of the gentleman and the moderation of the Christian; and thus the severest railing that probably ever fell from human lips flows on in a stream unaltered by one particle of malevolence, and unruffled by one expression of coarseness and bitterness. The transparency and integrity of his character not only shone conspicuous in all the transactions of his life, but seem even now to beam upon us as from an open, ingenuous countenance, in the imitable frankness and clearness of his style. It is impossible to read the passages in his philosophical writings, in which he notices or refutes the calumnies to which he had been exposed, and by which it was sometimes sought to defraud him of the honour of the discoveries he had made, in one instance even to cover him with the infamy of appropriating discoveries which had been made by others, without being convinced of the perfect candour and uprightness of his nature. His generosity and benevolence were unbounded; so much so, indeed, as to become almost vices by excess, passing far beyond that mean in which the Stagyrite fixes the limits of all virtue. He absolutely beggared himself by his prodigal benefactions: he did what few do, mortgaged even his expectancies to charity. To all which we may add, that he bore the prolonged and excruciating sufferings of his latter years with a patience and fortitude which astonished all who witnessed them.

The failings of Pascal (for to these we must advert) were partly the result of that system of faith in which he had been educated; and which, though he did so much to expose many of the worst enormities which had attached themselves to it, still exercised considerable influence over him. It is lamentable to see such a mind as his surrendering itself to some of the most grievous extravagances of asceticism. Yet the fact cannot be denied; nor is it improbable that his life—brief, perhaps, at the longest, considering his intense study and his feeble constitution—was made more brief by these pernicious practices. We are told not only that he lived on the plainest fare, and performed the most menial offices for himself,—not only that he practised the severest abstinence and the most rigid devotions,—but that he wore beneath his clothes a giraffe of iron, with sharp points affixed to it; and that whenever he found his mind disposed to wander from religious subjects, or take delight in things around him, he struck the giraffe with his elbow, and forced the sharp points of iron into his side. We even see but too clearly that his views of life to a considerable extent became perverted. He cherished mistrust even of its blessings, and acted, though he meant it not, as if the very gifts of God were to be received with suspicion as the smiling tempters to ruin—the secret enemies of our well-being. He often expresses himself as though he thought, not only that suffering is necessary to the moral discipline of man, but that nothing but suffering is at present safe for him. "I can approve," he says in one place, "only of those who seek in tears for happiness." "Disaster," he declares in another place, "is the natural state of Christians." It is evident that the gracious Master in whose school we all are, and whose various dispensations of goodness and severity are dictated by a wisdom greater than our own, does not think so: if he did, health would be the exception, and disease the rule.

Pascal was obviously misled, by these sentiments, into the self-imposed ascetic severities which aggravated all the sufferings of his later years. But it is at our peril that we interfere with the discipline which is provided for us. He who acts as if God had mistaken the proportions in which joy and sorrow, prosperity and adversity, should be allotted to us—who seeks, by hair shirts, prolonged abstinence, and self-imposed penance, to render more perfect the discipline of suffering,—only enfeebles instead of invigorating his piety, and resembles one of those hypochondriacal patients—the plague and torment of physicians—who, having sought advice, and being supposed to follow it, are found not only taking their physician's well-judged prescriptions, but secretly dosing themselves in the intervals with some quackish nostrum. Thus did Pascal; and it is impossible not to see that the experiment was attended in his case with very pernicious effects.

It is indeed pitiable to read that, during his last days, his perverted notions induced him to refrain from the natural expressions of fondness and gratitude towards his sisters and attendants, lest the affection with which they regarded him should become inordinate,—lest they should transfer to an earthly creature the affection due only to the Supreme. Something, indeed, like an attempted justification of such conduct occurs in his *Pensées*—"Il est injuste qu'on s'attache à moi, quoiqu'on le fasse avec plaisir et volontairement. Je tromperais ceux à qui j'en ferais naître le désir; car je ne suis la fin de personne, et n'ai pas de quoi les satisfaire. Ne suis-je pas prêt à mourir? Et ainsi l'objet de leur attachement mourra donc. Comme je serais capable de faire croire une fausseté, quoique je la persuadasse doucement et qu'on la crût avec plaisir, et qu'en cela on me fit plaisir; de même je suis capable de me faire aimer." Madame Perier has cited this passage in the life of her brother as accounting for his apparent coldness to herself.

It is wonderful that a mind so powerful should have been misled by a pernicious asceticism to adopt such maxims; it is still more wonderful that a heart so fond should have been able to act upon them. To restrain, even in his dying hours, expressions of tenderness towards those whom he so loved, and who so loved him; to simulate a coldness which his feelings belied; to repress the sensibilities of a grateful and confiding nature; to inflict a pang, by affected indifference, on hearts as fond as his own; here was indeed a proof of the truth upon which he so passionately meditated, the greatness and the misery of man,—of his strength and his weakness: weakness, in supposing that such perversion of all nature could ever be a dictate of duty; strength, in performing, without wincing, a task so hard. The American Indian, bearing unmoved the torture of his enemies, exhibits not, we may rest assured, greater fortitude than Pascal, when, with such a heart as his, he received in silence the last ministrations of his devoted friends, and even declined, with cold and averted eye, the assiduities of their zealous love. That same melancholy temperament which, united with a pernicious asceticism, made him turn his gaze even from innocent pleasure, and suspect a serpent lurking in every form of it, also gave to his representations of the depravity of our nature an undue intensity and Rembrandt-like depth of colouring. His mode of expression is often such that, were it not for what we otherwise know of his character, it might be mistaken for an indication of misanthropy. With this vice, accordingly, Voltaire does not hesitate to tax him. "Ce fameux écrivain, misanthrope sublime." Nothing can be more unjust. As to the substance of what Pascal has said of human frailty and infirmity, most of it is at once verified by the appeal to individual consciousness; and as to the manner, we are not to forget that he everywhere dwells as much upon the greatness as upon the misery of man. "It is the ruined archangel," says Hallam, with equal justness and beauty, "that Pascal delights to paint." It is equally evident that he is habitually inspired by a desire to lead man to truth and happiness; nor is there anything more affecting than the passage with which he closes one of his expositions with Infidelity, and which M. Cousin finely characterizes as "une citation glorieuse à Pascal." "This argument," you say, "delights me. If this argument

---

1 See more particularly his letters to Father Noël, M. Le Pailleur, and M. De Ribeury. 2 The passage of Madame Perier is deeply affecting. "Meanwhile, as I was wholly a stranger to his sentiments on this point, I was quite surprised and discouraged at the rebuffs he would give me upon certain occasions. I told my sister of it, and not without complaining that my brother was unkind, and did not love me; and that it looked to me as if I put him in pain, even at the very moment I was striving to please him, and striving to perform the most affectionate offices for him in his illness." (Madame Perier's Memoirs of Pascal.) pleases you, and appears strong; know that it proceeds from one who, both before and after it, fell on his knees before that infinite and invisible Being to whom he has subjected his whole soul, to pray that He would also subject you to Himself, for your good and for His glory; and that thus omnipotence might give efficacy to his feebleness."

In addition to this, it must be said that, in his most bitter reflections, this truly humble man is thinking as much of himself as of others, and regards Blaise Pascal as but a type of the race whose degeneracy he mourns. His most bitter sarcasms often terminate with a special application to the writer. Thus he says, "Vanity is so rooted in the heart of man, that a common soldier or scullion will boast of himself, and will have his admirers." It is the same with the philosophers. Those who write would fain have the fame of writing well; and those who read it, would have the glory of having read it; and I, who am writing, probably feel the same desire, and not less those who shall read it."

It is true, indeed, that some of his reflections are as caustic and bitter as those of Rochefoucauld himself. For example:—"Curiosity is but vanity. Often we wish to know more, only that we may talk of it. People would never traverse the sea if they were never to speak of it, for the mere pleasure of seeing, without the hope of ever telling what they have seen." And again:—"Man is so constituted that, by merely telling him he is a fool, he will at length believe it; and if he tells himself so, he will constrain himself to believe it. For man holds an internal intercourse with himself which ought to be well regulated, since even here 'evil communications corrupt good manners.'"—"I lay it down as a fact, that if all men knew what they say of one another, there would not be four friends in the world. This appears by the quarrels which are sometimes caused by indiscreet reports."

Still, as it is the motive which gives complexion to all our moral actions, so Pascal's bitter wisdom, or even his unjust satire, is something very different from misanthropy. With what noble eloquence—with what deep sympathy with humanity—does he rebuke the levity of those infidels who tell us, as if it were matter of triumph, that we are the inhabitants of "a fatherless and forsaken world," and who talk as if their vaunted demonstration of the vanity of our immortal hopes gave them a peculiar title to our gratitude and admiration! "What advantage is it to us to hear a man saying that he has thrown off the yoke; that he does not think there is any God who watches over his actions; that he considers himself as the sole judge of his conduct, and that he is accountable to none but himself? Does he imagine that we shall hereafter repose special confidence in him, and expect from him consolation, advice, succour, in the exigencies of life? Do such men imagine it is any matter of delight to us to hear that they hold that our soul is but a little vapour or smoke, and that they can tell us this in an assured and self-sufficient tone of voice? Is this, then, a thing to say with gaiety? Is it not rather a thing to be said with tears, as the saddest thing in the world?"

We now proceed to make a few observations on the principal writings of Pascal. The one on which his fame, as a great thinker, chiefly rests, fragmentary as it is, is the Pensées. We have alluded to the literary history of this work as highly curious. The thoughts were written, as already said, on any scraps of paper that came to hand; these were strung on a file, and left till health and leisure should enable the author to develop and arrange them.

Health and leisure never came. But it was not this only which has rendered the work so fragmentary. Many of the thoughts are themselves only half developed; others, as given us in the literal copy of M. Faugère's admirable edition, break off in the middle of a sentence, even of a word. Some casual interruption—frequently, no doubt, some paroxysm of pain, to which the great author in his latter years was incessantly subject—broke the thread of thought, and left the work imperfect for ever.

On the imperfect sentences and half-written words, which are now given in the volumes of M. Faugère, we look with something like the feelings with which we pore on some half-defaced inscription on an ancient monument—with a strange commixture of curiosity and veneration; and, whilst we wonder what the unfinished sentences may mean, mourn over the malicious accident which has perhaps converted what might have been aphorisms of profoundest importance into a series of incoherent ciphers. One of the last things, assuredly, which we should think of doing with such fragments would be to attempt to alter them in any way; least of all, to supplement them, and to divine and publish Pascal's meaning. There have been learned men who have given us supplements to the lost pieces of some ancient historians; erudite Freinsheimuses who hand us a huge bale of indifferent Latin, and beg us only to think Livy's lost Decades. But what man would venture to supplement Pascal? Only such, it may be supposed, as would feel no scruple in scouring an antique medal; or a successor to those monks who obliterated manuscript pieces of Cicero that they might inscribe them with some edifying legend. But more noted people were scarcely more scrupulous in the case of Pascal. His friends decided that the fragments which he had left behind him, imperfect as they were, were far too valuable to be consigned to oblivion; and, so far, all the world will agree with them. II, further, they had selected whatever appeared in any degree coherent, and printed these, verbatim et literatim, in the best order they could devise, none would have censured, and all would have thanked them. But they did much more than this, or rather they did both much more and much less. They deemed it not sufficient to give Pascal's remains with the statement that they were but fragments; that many of the thoughts were very imperfectly developed; that none of them had the advantage of the author's revision,—apologies with which the world would have been satisfied; but they ventured upon mutilations and alterations of a most unwarrantable description. In innumerable instances they changed words and phrases; in many others they left out whole paragraphs, and put a sentence or two of their own in the place of them; they supplemented what they deemed imperfect by an exordium or conclusion, without any indication as to what were the respective ventures in this rare species of literary co-partnery. It must have been odd to see this committee of critics sitting in judgment on Pascal's style, and deliberating with what alterations, additions, and expurgations it would be safe to permit the author of the Provincial Letters to appear in public. Arnauld, Nicole, and the Duc de Roannez were certainly no ordinary men; but they were no more capable of divining the thoughts which Pascal had not expressed, or of improving the style where he had expressed them, than of completing a sketch of Raphael.

It appears that, large as was the editorial discretion assumed, they had contemplated an enterprise still more audacious,—nothing less than that of completing the work which Pascal had projected, partly out of the materials which he had left, and partly from what their own ingenuity might supply. It even appears that they had actually commenced this heterogeneous structure; and an amusing account has been left by M. Perier of the progress the builders of this Babel had made, and the reasons for abandoning the design. "At last," says he, "it was resolved to reject the plan, because it was felt to be almost impossible thoroughly to enter into the thoughts and plan of the author, and, above all, of an author who was no more; and because it would not have been the work of M. Pascal, but a work altogether different—an outrage tout différent." Very different indeed! If this naïve expression had been intended for irony, it would have been almost worthy of Pascal himself.

Subsequent editors took similar liberties, if not so flagrant. While the original editors left out many passages from fear of the Jesuits, Condorcet, in his edition, omitted many of the most devout sentiments and expressions, under the influence of a very different feeling. Infidelity, as well as superstition, has its bigots, who would be well pleased to have their *index expurgatorius* also.

It had been long felt that no trustworthy edition of Pascal's *Thoughts* had been published—that nobody knew precisely what was his, and what was not. M. Cousin, in his valuable *Rapport*, demonstrated the necessity of an entirely new edition, founded upon a diligent collation of the original manuscripts; and this task M. Faugère performed with incredible industry. We must refer the reader to his interesting Introduction for proof of this statement. There the editor has given the details of his labours. Suffice it here to say, that every accessible source of information was carefully ransacked; every fragment of manuscript, whether in Pascal's own hand, or in that of members of his family, was diligently examined; and every page offers indications of minute attention, even to the most trivial verbal differences. Speaking of the autograph manuscript preserved in the Royal Library at Paris,—a folio into which the original loose leaves are pasted, or, when written on both sides, carefully *let into* the page ("encadrés"),—he says, "We have read, or rather studied, this manuscript page by page, line by line, syllable by syllable, from the beginning to the end, and, with the exception of some words which are illegible, it has passed entire into the present edition." As the public, in the former editions, did not exactly know what was Pascal's and what was not, M. Faugère has been compelled to do what, under other circumstances, would have been undesirable, and, indeed, hardly just; what, indeed, any author of reputation would vehemently protest against in his own case. He has been obliged to give every fragment, however imperfect, *verbatim*; and the extracts, as we have already said, often terminate in the middle of a sentence, sometimes even of a word. M. Vinet justly observes in relation to this feature of M. Faugère's labours, that Pascal himself would hardly have been satisfied with "either his old editors or the new."

At the same time, it must be confessed that, apart from this circumstance, it is deeply interesting to contemplate the first rude forms of profound or brilliant thoughts as they presented themselves to the ardent mind of Pascal. As M. Vinet says, "we are taken into the great sculptor's studio, and behold him at work chisel in hand."

It is impossible to determine, from the undeveloped character of these *Thoughts*, the precise form of the work Pascal contemplated; all we are told is, that it was to have treated of the primary truths of all religion, and of the evidences of Christianity. It is clear that about half the *Thoughts* which relate to theology at all have reference to the former, and form by far the profoundest portion.

In Pascal's day, however, both classes of subjects might have been naturally included in one work. The great deistical controversies of Europe had not yet commenced, and there had been little reason to discriminate very nicely the limits of the two investigations. Pascal himself could hardly have anticipated the diversified forms which the subject of the evidences of Christianity alone would assume; so diversified, indeed, that they are probably insusceptible, from their variety, of being fully exhibited by one mind, or consequently in one volume. The evidences of Christianity almost form a science of themselves.

Fragmentary as the *Pensées* are, it is easy to see, both from their general tenor and from the character of the author's mind, where the strength of such a work would be. His proofs of the truths of natural religion would have been drawn from within rather than from without; and his proofs of the truth of Christianity from its internal rather than external evidences—including in this term "internal" not only the adaptation of the doctrines revealed, to man's moral nature, but whatsoever indications the fabric of Scripture itself may afford of the divinity of its origin.—It is evident that he had revolved all these topics profoundly. None had explored more diligently the abyss of man's moral nature, or moved more deeply upon the "greatness and misery of man," or on the "contrarieties" which characterize him, or on the remedies for his infirmities and corruptions. And there are few, even since his time, who seem to have appreciated more fully the evidences of Christianity arising from indications of truth in the genius, structure, and style of the Scriptures; or from the difficulties, not to say impossibilities, of supposing such a fiction as Christianity the probable product of any human artifice, much less of such an age, country, and (above all) such men as the problem limits us to. In one passage he gives expression to a thought very similar to that which suggested the *Horse Pauline*. He says, "The style of the gospel is admirable in many respects, and, amongst others, in this, that there is not a single invective against the murderers and enemies of Jesus Christ. . . . If the modesty of the evangelical historians had been affected, and, in common with so many other traits of so beautiful a character, had been affected only that it might be observed; then, if they had not ventured to advert to it themselves, they would not have failed to get their friends to remark it to their advantage. But as they acted in this way without affectation, and from a principle altogether disinterested, they never provided any one to make such a criticism. And, in my judgment, there are many points of this kind which have never been noticed hitherto; and this testifies to the simplicity with which the thing was done."

He has also, with characteristic comprehensiveness, condensed into a single paragraph the substance of the celebrated volume of *Bampton Lectures* on the contrasts between Mohammedanism and Christianity. "Mahomet founded his system on slaughter; Jesus Christ by exposing his disciples to death; Mahomet by forbidding to read; the apostles by commanding it. In a word, so opposite is the plan of one from that of the other, that if Mahomet took the way to succeed according to human calculation, Jesus Christ certainly took the way to fail; and instead of arguing that, since Mahomet succeeded, Jesus Christ might also succeed, we ought rather to say, that since Mahomet succeeded, it is impossible but that Jesus Christ should fail."

On the subject of the external evidences we doubt whether he would have been equally successful, partly because the spirit of accurate historic investigation had not yet been developed, and partly from the character of his own mind. On the subject of miracles, too, he scarcely seems to have worked his conceptions clear; and in relation to that of prophecy, he was evidently often inclined to lay undue stress on analogies between events recorded in the Old Testament and others recorded in the New, where Scripture itself is silent as to any connection between them;—analogies in some cases as fanciful as any of those in which the fathers saw so many types and prefigurations of undeveloped truths.

From certain passages in the *Pensées*, a vehement charge of scepticism has been preferred by M. Cousin, from which says that writer, Pascal sought refuge in a voluntarily blind credulity. "Le fond même de l'âme de Pascal est un scepticisme universel, contre lequel il ne trouve d'asile que dans une foi volontairement aveugle." These are certainly charges which, without the gravest and most decisive proof, ought not to be preferred against any man, much less against one possessing so clear and powerful an intellect as Pascal. It is, in fact, the most degrading picture which can be presented of any mind; for what weakness can be more pitiable, or what inconsistency more gross, than that of a man who, by a mere act of will—if indeed such a condition of mind be conceivable—surrenders himself to the belief of the most stupendous doctrines, while he at the same time acknowledges that he has no proof whatever of their certainty?

It appears to us that M. Cousin has forgotten that Pascal by no means denies that there is sufficient evidence of the many great principles to which scepticism objects; he only maintains that we do not arrive at them by demonstration. He has powerfully vindicated the certainty of those intuitive principles which are not ascertained by reasoning, but are presupposed in every exercise of reasoning. Let us hear him: "The only strong point," says he, "of the dogmatists is, that we cannot, consistently with honesty and sincerity, doubt our own intuitive principles. . . . We know the truth, not only by reasoning, but by feeling, and by a vivid and luminous power of direct comprehension; and it is by this last faculty that we discern first principles. It is vain for reasoning, which has no share in discovering these principles, to attempt subverting them. . . . The Pyrrhonists who attempt this must try in vain. . . . The knowledge of first principles—as the ideas of space, time, motion, number, matter—is as unequivocally certain as any that reasoning imparts."

But let us hear him still more expressly on the subject of Pyrrhonism: "Here, then, is open war proclaimed among men. Each must take a side; must necessarily range himself with the Pyrrhonists or the dogmatists—for he who would think to remain neuter is a Pyrrhonian par excellence. He who is not against them is for them. What, then, must a person do in this alternative? Shall he doubt of everything? Shall he doubt that he is awake, or that he is pinched or burned? Shall he doubt that he doubts? Shall he doubt that he is? We cannot get so far as this; and I hold it to be a fact, that there never has been an absolute and perfect Pyrrhonian." M. Cousin must suppose Pascal to have made an exception in favour of himself, if it be indeed true that he was an universal sceptic. It appears to us that M. Cousin has not sufficiently reflected that, in those cases in which conclusions truly involve processes of reasoning, Pascal does not deny that the preponderance of proof rests with the truths he believes, though he denies the demonstrative nature of that proof; and he applies this with perfect fairness to the evidences of Christianity as well as to the truths of natural theology. "There is light enough," says he, "for those whose sincere wish is to see, and darkness enough to confound those of an opposite disposition." Of Christianity he says, "It is impossible to see all the proofs of this religion combined in one view without feeling that they have a force which no reasonable man can withstand."

It is not without reason that M. Faugère says, in reference to the charge of scepticism urged against Pascal, "Faith and reason may equally claim him. If they sometimes appear to clash in his mind, it is because he wanted time, not only to finish the work on which he was engaged, but even to complete that internal revision (son œuvre intérieure) which is a kind of second creation of genius; and to unite into one harmonious whole the diverse elements of his thoughts. Amongst the inedited fragments of Pascal, we find these remarkable lines:—'Il faut avoir ces trois qualités; Pyrrhonien, géomètre, Chrétien soumis; et elles s’accordent et se tempèrent en doutant où il faut, en assurant où il faut, en se soumettant où il faut.' These bold words comprise the entire history of Pascal, and express in brief the state of his mind." But it is impossible in the limits of this article to enter with the requisite fullness into the question of Pascal's imputed scepticism. The subject will be found fully treated in the essay of which this article is an abridgment; in M. Faugère's admirable Introduction to his edition of the Pensées; and in some very acute papers of M. Vinet, first collected and published in 1848, under the title Études de Blaise Pascal; especially in those Sur le Pyrrhonisme de Pascal, and Du Livre de M. Cousin sur les Pensées.

If the Pensées are the most profound, the Lettres Provinciales are the most brilliant of Pascal's works, and among the very few which, though turning on local and transient controversy, are so instinct with genius, so beautiful in thought and style, as to command the attention of all time.

Nothing could be apter for the purpose—that of throwing into strong light the monstrous errors of the system he opposed—than the machinery the author has selected. The affected ignorance and naïveté of M. Montalte, seeking information respecting the theological disputes of the age, and especially the doctrines of the Jesuits; the frankness of the worthy Jesuit father, of whom he asks instruction, and who, in the boundless admiration of his order, and the hope of making a convert, details without hesitation, or rather with triumph, the admirable contrivances by which their casuists had inverted every principle of morals and eluded all the obligations of Christianity; the ironical compliments of the supposed novice, intermingled with objections and slightly-expressed doubts,—all delivered with an air of modest ingenuousness which humbly covets further light; the acute simplicity with which he involves the worthy father in the most perplexing dilemmas; the expressions of unsophisticated astonishment, which but prompt his stolid guide eagerly to make good every assertion by a proper array of authorities,—a device which, as Pascal has used it, converts what would have been in other hands only a dull catalogue of citations into a source of perpetual amusement; the droll consequences which, with infinite affectation of simplicity, he draws from the Jesuit's doctrines; the logical exigencies into which the latter is thrown in the attempt to obviate them—all these things, managed as only Pascal could have managed them, render the book as amusing as any novel. The form of letters enables him at the same time to intersperse, amidst the conversations they record, the most eloquent and glowing invectives against the doctrines he exposes. Voltaire's well-known panegyric does not exceed the truth, that Molière's best comedies do not excel them in wit, nor the compositions of Bossuet in sublimity. "This work," says D'Alembert, "is so much the more admirable, as Pascal, in composing it, seems to have theologized two things which seem not made for the theology of that time—language and pleasantry."

The success of the work is well known. By his inimitable pleasantry Pascal succeeded in making even the dullest matters of scholastic theology and Jesuitical casuistry as attractive to the people as a comedy; and by his little volume did more to render the formidable society the contempt of Europe than was ever done by all its other enemies put together. The Jesuits had nothing for it but to inveigh against the letters as "the immortal liars" (les menteurs immortels).

Of the scientific writings of Pascal we have already spoken. Pascal I. (Pope) succeeded Stephen IV. in the pontifical chair in 817, and died in 824.

Pascal II. (Pope), whose real name was Ranieri, was a monk of the order of Cluni, and succeeded Urban II. in 1099. An inveterate struggle with the occupants of the imperial throne, regarding investitures, extended over the whole of his pontificate. He began the contest in 1102 by renewing the decrees of his predecessors on that subject, and by excommunicating the Emperor Henry IV. He then encouraged the son of that monarch to raise the standard of revolt; and to supplant his father in the throne. Under the new emperor, Henry V., the controversy only assumed a more serious aspect. The emperor refused to give up his right of investiture to the Pope. The Pope threatened to withhold the ceremony of coronation from the emperor. In 1110 the emperor advanced into Italy at the head of a large army, seized upon the person of the Pope, and consigned him to bondage. For more than two months the Pope continued obstinate, and was only induced by the entreaties of his friends to crown the emperor, and yield the point of dispute. Yet the controversy thus settled was soon started again by the synods and councils of the church. They recalled the concession that had been forcibly extracted by the emperor, and renewed their claim to the right of investiture. In this manner they brought the two great potentates once more into the field against each other. Henry V. led an army towards Rome in 1116, and Pascal retreated to Benevento. The former in course of time retired from the city; and the latter, returning during the absence of his adversary, was actively engaged in preparing war when he was cut off by disease in 1118.