Administrative Law in the Early Company Acts

To remedy certain defects in the common lawof partnership the Registration of Companies Act of i8441 required large partnerships to register under it as companies. On complete registration these companies received certain rights, e.g. a corporate name. Section 7 enacted that no joint stock company shall be entitled to receive a certificate of complete registration unless it is formed by some deed or writing. . It then set forth eleven necessary clauses of this deed, viz. the company's name, objects, address, capital, borrowing powers, subscribed capital, sharedivision, subscribers, share-holdings, directors, and the term of the company. It further required that the deed contain provisions for the internal regulation of the company, meeting, as far as the business of the company required, the thirty-eight purposes set out in Schedule A to the Act, and any other purposes not inconsistent with law as the company thought fit. These regulations covered the holding of meetings with procedure, the powers and duties of directors, and the procedure in calls and in loans. A model deed2 contained some I7,000 words. The section next provided that oln production of such deed the registrar shall grant a certificate of complete registration; and unless such deed and other matters be so produced and such conditions be so performed, it shall not be lawful for him to grant such certificate and after such certificate shall be granted it shall be taken as evidence of the proper provisions being inserted ... and of the condition hereby required... But it went on to enact that any defect or omission may be supplied by a supplementary deed or deeds even after complete registration had been granted. Section 8 enacted that if any deed appear to such registrar to be insufficient by reason of omission or incompleteness or incon

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