OWNERSHIP BY FOREIGN CORPORATIONS. 103 counsels may have dictated their procurement. To the suggestion that if foreign corporations may legally acquire and convey land in the State at pleasure, there is no limitation upon the amount which they may hold, it is answered that it is always within the power of the legislature to interfere and to regulate, if, by the magnitude of the business, the public interests are affected and seem unduly threatened. The case, it is held, does not fall within those which the courts have decided to be against public policy ; the business is not immoral in itself, and it is not prohibited by legislation. The legislation under which this case was decided is quite similar to that existing in some of the States, where as yet no judicial definition of State policy on the subject under discussion has been made ; and if the occasion shall arise there for obtaining such a definition, the opinion of the New York Court will doubtless carry much weight. The enlightened manner in which this court from its earliest history has dealt with questions involving corporate rights and privileges has been an important factor in the maintenance and growth of the commercial supremacy of a great State. Seventy-five years ago. Chancellor Kent said/ when the standing of a foreign corporation in the Equity Court of New York was questioned, " This court ought to be as freely open to such suitors as a court of law, and it would be most unreasonable and unjust to deny them that privilege. They might well exclaim :
- Quod genus hoc hominum ? . . .
. . . hospitio prohibemur arenae/ " Not only has the day gone by when foreign corporations, merely as such, may properly be looked upon with suspicion, but at the present time, the assimilation of real to personal property, for all the purposes of commerce, is such that the necessity for restraining laws has to a very great extent ceased. Judicial construction of legislation upon this subject should therefore be along broad and liberal lines, and not narrowed by the notion that foreign corpora- tions ** carry a black flag," or influenced by the ancient learning of English statutes inapplicable to our situation, and never adopted as a part of the law of our land. In conclusion, it may be well to call attention to a question which might in some contingencies be of great practical impor- tance to a corporation compelled to defend its title to lands in a 1 Silver Lake Bank v. Norih, 4 Johns Ch. 370
