The  company  is  not  like  a  partnership  for  general
trading  purposes,  in  which  one  part  may  be  encou-*
r^ed,  and  another  discouraged  or  abandoned,  ac*
cording  to  the  contingencies  of  trade,  and  a  general
authority  to  use  the  capital  to  the  best  advantage,
within  a  general  authority  to  trade;  but  it  is  a  part-
nership for  a  public  purpose,  for  effecting  a  work
which  it  is  a  duty  to  complete,  and  for  which  alone^
the  capital  is  advanced  in  shares.  The  obligation  to
complete  the  work  appears  to  me  to  be  co-extensive
with  the  authority  to  make  it.  The  acts  contain  no
authority  to  substitute  a  less  work,  or  part  of  the
whole  for  the  whole,  and  if  the  governors  or  directors
of  the  company  take  on  themselves  to  determine
that  they  will  not  perform  the  whole  work,  but  apply
the  capital,  collected  on  the  faith  of  the  whole  work
being  completed,  in  completing  only  a  part  of  it,  I  am
of  opnion  that  the  determination  is  without  authority^
and  contrary  to  the  provisions  of  the  act  of  parlia-
ment.
lam


CASES  m  CHANCERY.  137

I  am  clearly  of  opinion^  that  they  act  illegally  ae       1849.
against  the  landowners ;  and  if  there  were  not,  as  I     TT^'"^^
think  there  are,  sufficient  reasons  for  saying  that  they  v.
act  illegally  as  against  the  shareholders,  I  should  have   Wilkinsok.
