General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1888 Original Publisher: Little, Brown, and company Subjects: Banking law Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER XL1II. LEGISLATIVE CONTINUANCE OF CORPORATION. 765. The corporation may be continued in existence by virtue of an act of legislature, equally whether the act is passed before or after the expiration of the charter limitation. The bank will be revived by the act passed after the expiration in every respect as the same corporation which it was before; and will be in no respect affected by the break in continuity, except as to contracts such as official bonds that are bounded by the life of the charter. This is the unquestionable effect of a simple act of continuance or revival. But whether the act is in fact one of continuance and revival of the old corporation, or is the creation and institution of a new one, is a question of great importance. No general rule can be laid down for determining it, inasmuch as it depends in each case upon the intent of the legislators, as the same is judicially gathered and construed from the terms of the enactment. The statute will always be conclusive. The acts and conduct of the directors, which can possibly amount to nothing more than the expression of their construction of the act, will not be allowed to alter the true legal meaning and effect thereof, as the same shall appear to the judges. The enactment has either continued an old corporation, or it has made a new one. Whichever act it has done, it has done that act absolutely and irrevocably, and beyond the possibility of modif1cation or change by the words or deeds of the directors, who hold their office under and in subjection to it….