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 transowners,
 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 remunerative
 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.

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