The suggestion that "the Crown" is very often a suppressed or partially recognized corporation
aggregate is forced upon us so soon as we begin to attend with care to the language which is used by judges when they are freely reasoning about modern matters and are not feeling the pressure of old theories. Let us listen, for example, to Blackburn J., when in a famous opinion he was explaining why it is that the Postmaster-General or the captain of a man-of-war cannot be made to answer in a civil action for the negligence of his subordinates. "These cases were decided upon the ground that the government was the principal and the defendant merely the servant...All that is decided by this class of cases is that the liability of a servant of the public is no greater than that of the servant of any other principal, though the recourse against the principal, the public, cannot be by an action." So here the Government and the Public are identified, or else the one is an organ or agent of the other. But the Postmaster-General or the captain of a man-of-war is assuredly a servant of the Crown, and yet he does not serve two masters. A statute of 1887 tells us that "the expressions, permanent civil service of the State", permanent civil service of Her Majesty "and,
permanent civil service of the Crown" are hereby declared to have the same meaning".  Now as it is evident that King Edward is not (though Louis XIV may have been) the State, we seem to have statutory authority for holding that the State is "His Majesty". The way out of this mess, for mess it is, lies in a perception of the fact, for fact it is, that our sovereign lord is not a "corporation sole",
but is the head of a complex and highly organized "corporation aggregate of many" -- of very many. I see no great harm in calling this corporation a Crown. But a better word has lately returned to the statute book. That word is Commonwealth.

Even if the king would have served as a satisfactory debtor for the national debt, some new questions would have been raised in the course of that process which has been called the expansion of England; for colonies came into being which had public debts of their own. At this point it is well for us to remember that three colonies which were exceptionally important on account of their antiquity and activity, namely Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut,
were corporations duly created by charter with a sufficiency of operative and inoperative words. Also we may notice. that the king was no more a corporator of Rhode Island than he was a corporator of the city of Norwich or of the East India Company, and that the Governor of Connecticut was as little a deputy of the king as was the Governor of the Bank of England. But
even where there was a royal governor, and where there was no solemnly created corporation, there was a "subject" capable of borrowing money and contracting debts. At least as early as 1709, and I know not how much earlier, bills of credit were being emitted which ran in this form:

This indented bill of shillings due from the Colony of New York to the possessor thereof shall be in
value equal to money and shall be accepted accordingly by the Treasurer of this Colony for the time being in all public payments and for any fund at any time in the Treasury. Dated, New York the first of November, 1709, by order of the Lieutenant Governor, Council and General Assembly of the said Colony.

In 1714 the Governor, Council and General Assembly of New York passed a long Act "for the paying and discharging the several debts and sums of money claimed as debts of this Colony". A preamble stated that some of the debts of the Colony had not been paid because the Governors had misapplied and extravagantly expended "the revenue given by the loyal subjects aforesaid to Her Majesty and Her Royal Predecessors, Kings and Queens of England, sufficient for the honourable as well as necessary support of their Government here." "This Colony", the preamble
added, "in strict justice is in no manner of way obliged to pay many of the said claims"; however, in
order "to restore the Publick Credit", they were to be paid. Here we have a Colony which can be bound even in strict justice to pay money. What the great colonies did the small colonies did also. In 1697 an Act was passed at Montserrat "for raising a Levy or Tax for defraying the Publick Debts of this His Majesty's Island".

Our Taxes
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