' E.g. nbere a worktniiD'a accepting employment on machlDcrj which 1h not safeguarded as the law requires la oonslrued as an exercise of tbe indefeasible right of free contract on bia part, which thereby exempts the employer from liability for eventual accidents.
Id point of legal principle the reluctance to allow or recognlM limited liability in joint stock companies, In the English practice prior to the Companies Acts, was of much the same nature as the curreot reluctance to allow an alienation or abridgment of a workman's indiTidual responsibility [or the terms of Lis employment and the consequences following from It. It was (ell that a pecuniary liability waa a personal matter, of which tbe person was not competent to dlTest himself under that system of mutual rights and duties in which tbe members of tbe community were bound together. Impersonal, collective, and limited liability won Its way, a« against the system of natural liberty, In ibis Held by sheer force of business expediency. In a oonflict of principles between tlie main proposition and one ot its corollaries, tbe corollary won because the tacts bad outgrown the primal? implication ot tbe main proposition.
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In comparing the decisions of the higher courts with those of the lower they contrast most signally with the decisions rendered by juries in the lower tribunals. While this contrast has a signiScance in another connection, it casta no shadow on the legality of the decisions of the courts of higher instance. The juries, in great measure, speak for the untrained sympathies of the vulgar, which are a matter somewhat apart from the foundations of law and order.'