Definition
A monied corporation is a corporation defined by its financial powers rather than its commercial or manufacturing purpose — specifically, a corporation authorized to engage in banking, lending on pledges or deposits, or underwriting insurance. The term is principally a creature of early American statutory law and is now largely obsolete as an operative legal category, having been supplanted by more precise regulatory classifications such as "bank," "savings institution," "insurance company," or "financial institution."
The term does not describe a corporation that is simply wealthy. It describes a corporation whose core legal authority involves the use, custody, or deployment of money as a financial intermediary — accepting deposits, making loans, or insuring against risk.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Not independently defined. "Monied" (also spelled "moneyed") means having or characterized by money; wealthy.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Moneyed corporation" — a corporation whose operations involve the use or lending of money, as distinguished from manufacturing or trading corporations.
The gap between common and legal meaning is significant for researchers. In ordinary usage, "monied" simply means wealthy, which could describe any prosperous entity. The legal term is narrower and more structural: it identifies corporations defined by their chartered financial powers, not by their balance sheets. A monied corporation under New York's early statutory framework was not simply a rich corporation — it was one whose legal authority to operate depended on licensed financial functions. This distinction governed which regulatory and tax regimes applied.
Common Confusion
Monied corporation is sometimes read as a synonym for "business corporation" or "stock corporation." It is neither. Early American law drew firm lines among three main corporate types: monied corporations (financial intermediaries), manufacturing corporations, and municipal or quasi-public corporations. A manufacturing firm, however wealthy, was not a monied corporation. The confusion arises because modern usage has collapsed these categories under general corporate law, making the historical distinctions invisible to researchers unfamiliar with the period's taxonomy.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is essentially a period marker. If you encounter "monied corporation" in a legal source, you are almost certainly working in nineteenth-century American law, most likely New York or a jurisdiction that borrowed from New York's statutory framework. The New York Revised Statutes of 1829 were widely influential, and the tripartite classification of corporations they formalized — monied, manufacturing, and miscellaneous — shaped corporate law discourse across multiple states for decades.
Researchers should watch for two traps. First, do not assume uniformity across jurisdictions: New York's statutory definition was precise, but other states used the phrase more loosely or defined it differently by their own revised codes. Second, the term fades from legal usage after the mid-to-late nineteenth century as specialized banking and insurance regulation developed independent statutory frameworks. Searching for "monied corporation" in post-1880 sources will produce diminishing and potentially misleading results — the entity type still existed, but it was increasingly identified by its specific industry classification rather than this generic category.
For corpus researchers, this term connects directly to questions of corporate ultra vires doctrine, because the scope of a monied corporation's powers was strictly defined by charter and statute. Acts exceeding those powers — lending in unauthorized ways, engaging in commerce outside the financial sphere — raised ultra vires questions with serious legal consequences. The corporate purpose and powers literature is therefore the most productive adjacent research area.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the cleanest surviving statutory definition: under New York law, a monied corporation meant "every corporation having banking powers, or having the power to make loans upon pledges or deposits, or authorized by law to make insurances." Burrill cites New York Revised Statutes at 1 Rev. Stat. 601, § 61, and references 3 Comstock's Reports 479 (New York Court of Appeals) as judicial authority.
Burrill's entry is characteristically lean — it records the statutory text and the citation without elaboration. What it does not address is how courts applied or strained this definition in practice: whether hybrid corporations with incidental lending powers fell within the category, how the definition interacted with special charters granted before the Revised Statutes, or how the term traveled to other jurisdictions. Researchers should treat Burrill's entry as a starting point for locating the statutory text and the Comstock citation, not as a comprehensive treatment.
No other source dictionary in the Law Mind corpus covers this term, which itself reflects how completely the category has passed from active legal use.
Jurisdictional Note
The statutory definition in Burrill derives from New York law. Other states adopted similar tripartite classifications in their own revised codes, but the precise contours of "monied corporation" varied. Researchers working outside New York should locate the relevant state's revised statutes directly rather than assuming the New York definition controlled.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Corporate Formation — Corporate Purpose, Powers, and Ultra Vires Doctrine (The Law Mind Business Organizations & Corporate Law Encyclopedia)
Corporate Formation — Corporate Types: Close, Professional, Benefit Corporations (The Law Mind Business Organizations & Corporate Law Encyclopedia)