No body to incarcerate

There is a saying attributed to UK peer and - as Lord Chancellor, head of the courts - Baron Thurlow, which I had heard along the lines of corporations having "no soul to save and no body to incarcerate" (Stibbe, 2013, p. 126; Achbar & Abbot, 2004, 12:46). When I went looking for that particular quote, I ran across the following - also presented as a quote: "Did you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience, when it has no soul to be damned, and no body to be kicked?" (Coffee, 1981, p. 386; King, 1977, p. 1); and even more stirringly, Baron Thurlow reputedly whispered an aside, "[a]nd, by God, it ought to have both" (p. 386, citing Menchen, 1942, p. 223). 

But I was confused. Which was the actual quote? 

"no soul to save and no body to incarcerate" (Stibbe, 2013, p. 126);

Or

"no soul to be damned, and no body to be kicked?" (Coffee, 1981, p. 386).

First I went looking for Coffee's sources (1981); Mencken (1942), and King (1977). I found King, who had simply listed, as quote on page 1 of the text, exactly what Coffee had cited. I could not find a 1942 version of the Mencken book. I found a 1962 edition, which contained the following:

"'A corporation is just like any natural person, except that it has no pants to kick or soul to damn, and, by God, it ought to have both!' Ascribed to an unnamed Western judge in ERNST and LINDLEY: Hold Your Tongue, 1932" (Mencken, 1962, p. 223). 

So this one was apparently not Baron Thurlow; but an anonymous judge (who could be Baron Thurlow, but perhaps the author themselves was unsure so erred on the side of safety). In seeking Mencken's sources I hit a dead end; when I went looking for the Ernst and Lindey text I could only find an updated edition, from 1950, which did not contain this quote. Hmm. Perhaps Coffee had conflated the two entries, and ascribing the King source to the Mencken quote?

So I went looking for the quote which I had remembered: roughly no soul to save or body to incarcerate, this time using Wikiquote. And I found:

"Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned; they therefore do as they like", citing Poynder (1844, p. 268) with the clarification that "This is often misquoted as 'Did you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience, when it has no soul to be damned, and no body to be kicked?'"

Ah. Now this sounded roughly right. I went looking for Poynder (1844, p. 268) in the Internet Archive (here) and checked the entry. It read as follows:

"LORD CHANCELLOR THURLOW said that Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned; they therefore do as they like", citing "Miscellaneous".

It is worth noting here that, in the preface, Poynder said "Where an entry is marked as 'Miscellaneous' it may either be referred to the desultory reading which had only left its impress on the memory, and where the precise authority could not be recovered; or else may be considered as original matter now first commended to notice" (1844, p. iv). Brownie points are owed to Poynder for admitting the potential for the vagaries of memory. However, I still think I will go with his account, as Poynder made a business of collecting quotes, publishing two volumes, and he was a partial contemporary of Thurlow (who lived 1731 to 1806; Poynder 1779 to 1849; Wikiquote, 2025). I could be wrong, of course in my assumption, and will keep my eyes peeled for any earlier evidence.

We do need to be careful in attributing sayings, but having so many out of print books searchable online is an amazing assist for quote-hunters everywhere.

Sam

References:

Achbar, M. (Director), & Abbott, J. (Director) (2004). The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power [documentary film]. Big Picture Media Corporation.

Coffee, J. C. (1981). "No soul to damn: no body to kick": An unscandalized inquiry into the problem of corporate punishment. Michigan Law Review, 79(3), 386-459. https://doi.org/10.2307/1288201

King, M. (1977). Public Policy and the Corporation. Chapman and Hall.

Mencken, H. L. (1962). A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles from Ancient and Modern Sources. Alfred A. Knopf.

Poynder, J. (1844). Literary Extracts from English and Other Works; collected during half a century (Vol. 1). John Hatchard and Son.

Stibbe, A. (2013). The Corporation as Person and Psychopath: Multimodal metaphor, rhetoric and resistance. Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines (CADADD) Journal, 6(2), 114-136. https://eprints.glos.ac.uk/681/1/The%20Corporation%20as%20Person%20and%20Psychopath.pdf

Wikiquote. (2025). Edward Thurlow, 1st Baron Thurlow. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edward_Thurlow,_1st_Baron_Thurlow