LAW AND PRACTICE

OF

JOINT STOCK COMPANIES

AND

OTHER ASSOCIATIONS,

AS REGULATED BY

THE COMPANIES ACT, 1862,

COMPRISING :-

I. THE LAW AND PRACTICE OF JOINT STOCK COMPANIES.
II. THE COMPANIES ACT, 1862, WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES.
III. THE INDUSTRIAL AND PROVIDENT SOCIETIES ACT, 1862, WITH NOTES.
IV. A DIGEST OF DECISIONS ON THE LAW OF JOINT STOCK COMPANIES.
V. GENERAL ORDER AND RULES OF THE HIGH COURT OF CHANCERY.
VI. CONVENTION BETWEEN HER MAJESTY AND THE EMPEROR OF THE
FRENCH.

BY

EDWARD W. COX,

BARRISTER-AT-LAW-RECORDER OF FALMOUTH.

SIXTH EDITION.

JOHN CROCKFORD,

LAW TIMES OFFICE, 10, WELLINGTON STREET.

STRANI.

PREFACE.

THE FOURTH Edition of this work has been out of print for more than two years; but I was deterred from answering the call for a new Edition by the announcement that a measure was in preparation for amending and consolidating the Law of Joint Stock Companies. The promised Bill was brought forward last year, but failed to become law, and again I was reluctantly compelled to defer the production of the new Edition. The last session proved more fortunate: the promised Act was passed, and I lose no time in the performance of the promise so long announced, but so unavoidably deferred.

The present volume is more than a new Edition -it is a new Book. The Introductory Treatise on the Law and Practice of Joint Stock Companies has been almost entirely re-written. The text of the law itself is changed in form, in language, and in enactment; its provisions are considerably enlarged, and the notes to them are, therefore, for the most part, necessarily new.

I had originally contemplated a formal treatise on the Law of Joint Stock Companies; but when the new Act was found to be so comprehensive a substitute for all the law previously existing on that subject, it was deemed the most convenient course on this occasion to present the text of the law, with explanatory annotations, and reserve the construction of a formal treatise for a future time, when the new law shall have been settled by decisions on its construction-when the Court shall have issued its rules and orders for the regulation of the practice under the Act, and when possible amendment acts may be required to explain, improve, and extend the principal act.

But that the entire of the existing law of Joint Stock Companies may be placed in the reader's hands under one cover, a Digest of the Decisions of all the Courts on that branch of the law has been appended, limiting, however, the cita