156 CORPORATIONS. [AET. 26.

shall be a competent witness, and shall not be objected to on
account of any interest he may have as such member in the
result of any such action or proceeding.

38. Any association of persons which may have been organized
or established at any time before the thirtieth day of April in the
year eighteen hundred and fifty-two, on being made a body cor-
porate under the provisions of section thirty of this article, shall
become merged in such corporate body thereby created, and
every act done and to be done by any such unincorporated asso-
ciation of persons relating to the ends and objects of such asso-
ciation, and all mortgages, bonds or other instruments made to
such association of persons, or to any person or persons to and
for the use of such association of persons, or any member thereof
as such, shall remain and continue in full force and virtue at law
and in equity, in like manner as if such unincorporated associa-
tion of persons had originally been a body corporate.

39. Any trustee or trustees, person or persons to whom any
such conveyance shall have been made to and for the use of
such unincorporated association, may be required to assign and
transfer the same to such corporation, and they shall be as good
and sufficient as if made to such corporation; and all the liabilities
and obligations of, by and between the members of such incor-
porated association of persons shall remain of as binding force or
effect as if such association had been from the first incorporated.

FOR MANUFACTURING PURPOSES.

40. Any five or more free white persons, who may desire to
form a company for the purpose of carrying on any manufac-
turing business, may make, sign, and acknowledge before some
officer competent to take the acknowledgment of deeds, and
record the same in the office of the clerk of the Circuit Court for
the county, or clerk of the'Superior Court of Baltimore city,
(in whichever the business may be carried on,) a certificate in
writing, in which shall be stated the corporate name of the com-
pany; the corporate name always to include the name of the
county or city in which the business is carried on; the amount
of the capital stock of said company; the term of its existence,
not to exceed forty years; the number of shares of which the
said stock shall consist; the number of trustees, directors, or
managers, and their names, who shall manage the concerns of
the company for the first year, and the name or names of the