420 McKIM v. ODOM.—3 BLAND.

have an order of publication against a foreign corporation; or
have the bill taken pro confesso as against natural persons; or that
he may, in the discretion of the Court, have an immediate seques-
tration of the property of the corporation. That in all cases the
chief officer or principal members of the body politic, who have a
knowledge, or who are charged with having a knowledge of the
facts stated in the bill, should make oath to the truth of its answer,
as if it were their own, and be subject to the like penalties. And
that it should not be necessary, in any case, to make an officer or
member of the body politic a co-defendant for the sole purpose of
obtaining an answer on oath. And also, that the Court should be
* allowed, where the right to a deposit, or the stock of a
425 company, was made the subject of controversy in any suit,
to order the company to transfer or hold its stock, and to pay or
hold dividends or deposits, as the justice of the case might re-
quire, by serving upon them a copy of such order without making
them parties to the suit. These few alterations in the course of
the procedure of this Court; would save to all parties, in such
cases, a deal of time, trouble, and expense, which is now unneces-
sarily wasted. (Some alterations have been since made by the
Acts of 1832, ch. 306, and 1834, ch. 89.)

When I consider that this is the first application of its kind;
that there has been heretofore no regularly settled practice in this
Court in relation to bodies politic; and that it has a large, and
almost unlimited control over its own rules of practice, Dicas v.
Lord Brougham, 25 Com. Law Rep. 382, I feel tempted at once to
make those evidently useful alterations as to the course of pro-
ceeding against corporations. But when, on the other hand, I
recollect that it has been always considered as an established
principle, that this Court is confined, in all material particulars, to
those forms of proceeding which have been settled by the Court of
Chancery of England, from which it has deduced all its modes of
acting, Digges' Lessee v. Beale, 1 H. & McH. 71; Ringgold's Case,
1 Bland, 18, and also, that this conformity to the ancient English
course of proceeding, has been, in various ways, recognized and
affirmed by legislative enactments, 1785, ch. 72, s. 25 and 26;
Collyer on Partn. 412, I have become satisfied that it is safest and
best to leave the matter to the General Assembly, who alone are
competent to alter and shorten the process in Chancery, perma-
nently and effectually. I shall, therefore, hold myself bound to
adopt and apply the ancient and known writs and process of the
English Court of Chancery, so far as they have not been altered
or affected by the principles of our government; or the positive
provisions of our laws, in the best manner that the nature and
circumstances of the case will permit.

It is said, in one of the very respectable treatises on equity
pleading, that "in the case of a corporation aggregate, where the