THE BELLONA CO'S CASE.—3 BLAND. 439

Baltimore County Court; and these not being mere ex parte affi-
davits, but depositions taken under the order of the 25th of
August, of that Court; and as in cases of this description, I have
not felt myself authorized to revise or reverse any order of the
Court from which the case comes, Strike's Case, I Bland, 67; these
depositions must now be received and read, as having been sanc-
tioned by that order.

It is a well established rule of this Court, that, on a motion of
this kind, the defendant can only ask for a dissolution of the in-
junction upon so much of his answer as is properly responsive to
the bill; no new matter in avoidance, making its appearance for
the first time in the answer, can, in this stage of the case, be
allowed to form any part of the foundation of the defendant's
motion for a dissolution. It is a direct and responsive denial of
the facts composing that case on which the plaintiff's equity rests
which alone can entitle the defendant to a dissolution of the in-
junction. Salmon v. Clagett, ante, 159. Hence, all that has been
said by the defendants as to the plaintiffs having, in fact, no cor-
porate capacity, must be considered as new matter in avoidance
of the plaintiffs' claim; and therefore cannot be now properly
heard and determined upon.

But the suggestions which arise out of this portion of the
defence, it, is obvious, may be worthy of the gravest consideration
* when the Court shall be called on for its judgment upon
such a case. In the preamble of the Act of 1824, ch. 32, 446
which is one of the Acts under which the plaintiffs claim to be a
body politic, it is said to have been represented, that in conse-
quence of the decrease in their number, it is impracticable, at
present, to choose from their body five directors, the number pre-
scribed by their original incorporating Act of 1814, ch. 78; and
therefore, it is declared, that three directors only shall be chosen
to manage all the concerns of the company. Hence it would seem,
that prior to the passage of the last of these Acts, the body politic
had actually become extinct, by reason of this impracticability of
choosing five directors.

It is certainly within the constitutional scope of the powers of
the General Assembly to constitute a body politic of one, or of a
plurality of individuals; but if a corporate capacity be given to a
plurality, and the stock of the company, by the owning of which
alone any individual can be considered as a corporator, is all pur-
chased up, and held by one, it would seem, that the body politic
would be thereby virtually dissolved. And as it would seem, it
might be considered as a fraudulent evasion of the law, for any
one individual, who had purchased all the stock of such corpora-

at the hearing of such motion, shall be considered in connection with the
bill, or petition and answers in the cause; 1835, ch. 380. s. 8.