484 



) great as to constitute a very cogent reason 

 why a strong national authority should be empowered to 

 afford to them uniform and effective treatment." A legal 

 definition is that "A corporation is an artificial being, 

 invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of 

 law. Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those 

 properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it, 

 either expressly or as incidental to its very existence." 1 

 Another legal authority says : — " The regulation of any 

 artificial person in matters concerning only itself or the 

 relations of its members, if any, to it, aud to one another, 

 must depend on the law from which it derives its existence. 

 That law is its personal law, or, in other words, it is 

 domiciled in the country of that law." 2 Now in what is 

 known as the Union label case, the Chief Justice of the 

 Australian High Court laid it down that " the power to 

 legislate as to internal trade and commerce is reserved to 

 the State by the operation of Section 107 to the exclusion 

 of the Commonwealth " — except only as a necessary means 

 for carrying into execution other power expressly granted. 

 The creation of trading corporations and their investiture 

 with needful powers and capacities is thus left entirely to 

 the States ; and the Commonwealth has nothing to do with 

 the matter. It can hardly be contended that the Con- 

 stitution has handed over to the Commonwealth, solely, the 

 regulation of the existing body of company law. The Com- 

 monwealth cannot therefore create such a corporation; it 

 cannot alter the conditions and nature of its existence ; it 

 cannot annihilate a corporation. What then can the Com- 

 mon wraith do? It has, however, been judicially contended 

 in various judgments delivered by individual members of 

 the High (A>urt (which I need not specifically quote, being 

 more concerned with the tenor of the judgments than the 



1 Marshall, C. J., U.S.A. * WV»tl:ike ., n - I'i ivatn [r.t.rnational Law." 



