Sec.7.  The necessity and effect of incorporating a village may not yet clearly appear to every reader.  Let us illustrate.  By a general law of the state, or by a vote of the electors of a township in pursuance of such law, cattle may run at large in the highways.  This might be to many persons in a village, a great annoyance, which can be prevented or abated only by confining the cattle.  Or, sidewalks may need to be made.  Or, it may be deemed necessary to provide means for extinguishing fires, by purchasing fire-engines and organizing fire companies.  In an unincorporated village there is no power to compel the citizens to do these things.  Those, therefore, who desire that the citizens should have power to make all needful regulations for the government of the village, petition the legislature for an act of incorporation granting the necessary powers.

Sec.8.  The constitutions of some states require the legislature to pass a general law prescribing the manner in which the people of any village may form themselves into a corporation, with the necessary powers of government, with out a special law for that purpose.

Sec.9.  Besides these territorial corporations for purposes of government, as counties, towns, cities, &c., there are incorporated companies for carrying on business of various kinds, as turnpike and rail-road companies, and companies for the purposes of banking, insurance, manufacturing, &c.  These kinds of business, to be carried on successfully, sometimes require a larger amount of money than one man possesses.  A number of persons, therefore, unite their capital under an act of incorporation granting them power to manage their business which they could not have in an ordinary business partnership.  Besides, a common partnership must end on the death of any one of the partners; but an incorporated company is not thus affected by the death of its members.

Sec.10.  It is in the nature of corporations to have a perpetual existence.  A corporation may live after the persons who first composed it are all dead; for those who come after them have the same powers and privileges.  A town or city incorporated a hundred years ago, is the same town or city still, although none of its first inhabitants are living.  So a railroad or banking corporation may exist after the death of many, or even all of the original corporators.

Sec.11.  But there are certain particulars in which all corporations are not the same.  A state has been defined to be a body politic, or corporation.  (Chap.  I. Sec.10; III, Sec.5.) But it differs from other government corporations, as counties, towns, cities, &c., in this:  the latter are formed by acts of the legislature; but a state is formed by the people in their political capacity in establishing the constitution.