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PROTESTANT MAGAZINE.

MAY, 1846.

CHARITABLE TRUSTS BILL.

We have devoted a portion of our preceding numbers to an exposure of three measures brought beiore Parliament this session, of a very dangerous description, and deeply affecting the vital interests of our constitution. We refer to the Bill, introduced under the auspices of Lord John Manners, for altering the Mortmain Laws, and those of the Lord Chancellor and Mr. Watson, each of which goes to repcal or alter the Act of Supremacy, whilst the latter is intended to remove also the protective provisions of the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829.

To these two last-mentioned Bills, we trust a most strenuous opposition will be evinced by Members of the House of Lords, and of the House of Commons, and that those Bills will shortly be numbered, as that affecting the Laws of Mortmain already is, amongst the rejected Bills of 1846.

We now proceed to notice another Bill, which many regard as of a more dangerous, because of a more insidious character. We refer to the Charitable Trusts Bill, intituled, " An Act for securing the due Administration of Charitable Trusts in England and Wales."

Two months have passed since it was introduced into the House of Lords by the Lord Chancellor, and public attention having been in some degree drawn to its provisions and details, there seems to be almost one unanimous feeling of opposition against it.

There are scarcely any of our readers who are not interested in the provisions of this Bill, and may not sooner or later be brought under its operation. It may be that many have not heard of its name; it may be that more are ignorant of its provisions; and that a yet greater number have little or no desire to be made acquainted with the subject. Satisfied to go on in the quiet discharge of duties which daily devolve upon them, they would leave to others the turmoil of political warfare. But, unhappily for them, however much they may desire not to intermeddle with the laws of their country, or those who make or administer them, there is a want of reciprocity. The laws, the law-makers, and the administrators of the law, will intermeddle VOL. VIII-May, 1846. New Series, No. 5.

with them, whether they will or no; and when they find charities founded by their ancestors wrested from their control by the dictum of two of the Commissioners, based on the Report of two Inspectors-to be appointed by this Act-when they find a control assumed by these functionaries over the mode of keeping the accounts of even voluntary Societies, which are to be taxed to a large amount, to raise a fund to support the expensive machinery of this Bill; when various trustees find themselves summarily dismissed without the power of appeal-and others so harassed, by continual visits of inspectors, information of spies, and citations of commissioners, that they abandon their onerous duties-it will be vain and idle to complain of the operations of a law which their own connivance has sanctioned-which they might have resisted, but would not.

It is not by blinding our eyes to passing events that we shall best discharge our duties: it is not by hiding our heads and thinking there is no danger-a policy more worthy of ostriches than men—but by rousing ourselves to a sense of our dangers and duties, that so, through the Divine blessing on our exertions, we may avoid the one, and rightly discharge the other.

A Bill of unmixed evil was never, perhaps, passed into law in a free country; but evil measures, disguised in the shape and semblance of what is good-destroying where they profess to build up-corrupting where they pretend to purify-have often been imposed upon a people. And it is under the cloak of better administering the small funds, without incurring the expense of proceedings in a Court of Equity for that purpose, that this Bill has been brought in.

We have not space here to give even an epitome of each provision of a Bill consisting of seventy-two sections, and occupying more than twenty-two folio pages. The powers conferred by it are of the most arbitrary description, utterly at variance with the genius of the British constitution, and may be applied to the most dangerous purposes. By the operation of this Bill, all charities will, more or less, be placed under the control of the Minister of the day, who may extinguish or direct them as he pleases. Any man, therefore, who desires to see charitable trusts not perverted, who would protect the interests of his country, and those of religion, ought to oppose this Bill, as fraught with danger to their best interests.

We do not here, for a moment, desire to vindicate any existing abuses, nor wish to obstruct the adoption of any measures which may prove really beneficial to the country, by procuring a better administration of some of the charities included in the scope of this Bill.

We desire only that a measure shall not pass as remedial, which in reality aggravates the evil, or implants greater than those which it would cure.

Of the small properties held subject to charitable trusts: all not exceeding one hundred pounds per annum, are to be subjected to the summary jurisdiction of a body of commissioners. The Lord Chancellor is to appoint three commissioners (Sec. 1), and two inspectors (Sec. 4), and the commissioners are to appoint a secretary, clerks, messengers, and other officers (Sec. 6). The whole of these officials are to have ample salaries allowed them (Sec. 9), and provision is made for the salaries by creating a "charity administration fund" (Sec. 54), towards which, each small charity is to contribute yearly threepence in the pound of its annual net revenue, all other charities whatever being made to pay for the same a penny-halfpenny in the pound, not exceeding, in any case, 1007. Of the 40,000 charities (yielding an aggregate income of 1,200,0007.) which are to pay the threepence, 7,000 are of 51. and under; of these 6,000 are of 37. and under, and 3,500 vary from 1s. to 20s. The threepence per pound, and three-halfpence per pound, are not the only portion of these funds to be withdrawn from their legitimate application. The fifty-sixth clause of the Bill compels every charity to deposit at its own expense, or the trustees, or persons holding the property charged with the payments, attested copies of all new title-deeds in the commissioners' office, and, if required, copies of all previous conveyances. The expense of complying with this requirement will swallow up, in not a few instances, several years' income of the charity. This costly commission is empowered to make orders on trustees and others for the payment of any money in their hands, or for the future administration of the estate, and to establish (with the written consent of the special visitors, if any) such schemes for the application of the revenues of any charities as shall to them seem fit, where the fund cannot be applied as directed by the donor. "Every such order shall be final and conclusive, and not subject to any review, unless the commissioners shall think fit to re-hear the same.

On the powers intended to be conferred by this Bill, a recent number of the "Edinburgh Review" contains the following remarks:-" Without doubt these are very extensive powers; they are such as no English court, indeed, such as no English sovereign has ever possessed. The Bill is a step in centralization, as much in advance of the Poor-law Amendment Act, as that Act was in advance of all that had gone before. That Act created about sixteen thousand guardians; but it carefully excluded the commissioners from any share in their nomination. The charity commissioners are themselves to nominate. They will, probably, appoint several hundred trustees every year. In the course of a few years all the trustees of charities under one hundred pounds a-year, and of the municipal charities, will be their nominees. And, whether appointed by them or not, the whole body will be under their control. They may harass them

by inquiries, annoy them by regulations, censure them by their reports; or, on the other hand, assist them in their prospective arrangements, and sanction their past conduct."--Edinburgh Review, April, 1846, No. 168, p. 480.

Invested with these despotic powers,-with the whole body of trustees thus appointed by the commissioners, or under their control,—the provisions of the nineteenth section of the Bill, cannot but be regarded as most dangerous. That section provides: "And be it enacted, that in every case within the summary jurisdiction of the commissioners, limited as aforesaid, in which it shall appear to the commissioners that property given on or subject to any charitable trust cannot be applied to the purposes directed by and according to the intention of the donor thereof, it shall be lawful for the commissioners, upon the application of the trustees or the major part of them, and with the consent of the visitor or visitors, in cases where there is a special visitor or visitors of the charity, to be signified in writing under his, her, or their hand or hands, by order under their seal to settle or approve a scheme for the application of such property to any charitable purposes as the commissioners shall think fit: provided always, that in the case of any charity for the purpose.of education in connexion with the United Church of England and Ireland, if there be not any special visitor, the consent of the bishop of the diocese shall be required in order to the validity of such new scheme, in like manner as though he were a special visitor appointed in the instrument of foundation."

out.

"A friend to the principle of this Bill has informed us, and in good time, what is the intent and object of this clause giving power to the Commissioners to direct, settle, and approve of new schemes for the application of charity property where "it may appear to them" that the will of the donor cannot be duly carried "There may be,' he says, 'the case of a grammar-school, in which the donor willed that ten boys should be taught Latin. Now, the funds from which ten boys are taught Latin would suffice to teach 200 English.' What is the meaning of this insidious sentence? Why, that all our grammar schools are to be turned into pauper-workhouse schools: that the class for whom these establishments were founded, and to whom they were intended to be useful, are to be deprived of the benefits designed for them."* Nay, more than this, it will greatly aid the advance of Popery. The Roman Catholics tell us that they look forward to entire ascendancy. For this they labour most perseveringly; and on the attainment of this they are resolutely bent. Their intrigues in the Cabinet, their intimidation in Ireland, are all directed to this end; and this Bill supplies the machinery by which hey can more effectively work out their design.

* Address to the Lords Spiritual and Temporal.