JOINT-STOCK COMPANIES 817 the Crown or Parliament. A still more remarkable change A.D. 1776 . . Lao —1850. occurred in 1855!, when the principle of the limited liability of shareholders, which previous generations had considered to i be so dangerous, was recognised as reasonable. Companies, with shares of £10 and upwards, could henceforth be formed, the shareholders of which were not, in the event of the bankruptcy of the company, liable for more than the amount of their shares. The Company Acts were consolidated in 1862% and greater opportunity was given than before for obtaining a number of small contributions towards the large capital which was necessary to carry on the trade of the world. There had been some discussion, during the eighteenth and these . ‘ . were largely century, as to the kinds of business for which Company used organisation was adapted, and Adam Smith had laid down the canon that it could only be suitably introduced in cases where the conduct of affairs could be reduced to some sort of routine; but owing to changed circumstances it was possible to bring much of the external traffic of the realm under these appropriate conditions. The business of carrying became more completely differentiated from that of trading in goods, and companies were formed to organise and maintain fleets of steamers and sailing-vessels, which should ply at regular intervals between definite ports. In 1840, a firm of ship- for trans- owners, which was already responsible for the conveyance of shipping. mails to the Peninsula, was reconstituted on a joint-stock basis, and obtained such a command of capital as to be able to provide a regular service of steamers between London and Alexandria, and between Suez and Bombay? Similarly the partnership of Messrs Cunard, Burns, and McIver, to whom the contract for conveying the Atlantic mails by steamer was given in 1838, was the foundation of the Cunard Company. Communication with the West Indies was accelerated by the formation of the Royal Mail Steam-Packet Company, which started on a large scale; the venture did not prove re- munerative at first. and the companv onlv maintained its 1 18 and 19 Vict. ¢. 138. 2 25 and 26 Vict. c. 89. 8 Lindsay, History of Merchant Shipping, 1v. 388. i 75. 180. Lh