Charity in UK Law

In such cases the relief granted often takes the form of an Order approving a scheme for the administration of the charity which has been laid before the Court, but this is not the only way in which the Court can exercise jurisdiction in respect of a charity or over charity trustees.

My Lords, there are, I think, two propositions which must ever be borne in mind in any case in which the question is whether a trust is charitable. The first is that it is still the general law that a trust is not charitable and entitled to the privileges which charity confers, unless it is within the spirit and intendment of the preamble to the Statute of Elizabeth, ( 43 Eliz. c. 4), which is expressly preserved by S. 13(2) of the Mortmain and Charitable Uses Act, 1888.

The sum, in my opinion, is in no different position from a sum (having the requisite quality of recurrence) paid without conditions or counter stipulations out of taxed income under a covenant by a private individual to any charitable body. The Crown would neither admit nor deny that such a payment would be an annual payment to the charity within the meaning of Case III, or that the party paying it would be entitled to retain the tax, or that the charity would be entitled to recover it.

Under English law charity has always received special treatment. It is therefore subject to special rules governing registration, administration, taxation and duration. Although not a state institution, a charity is subject to the constitutional protection of the Crown as parens patriae, acting through HM Attorney-General, to the state supervision of the Charity Commissioners and to the judicial supervision of this Court.

"Charity", says Lord Macnaghten at p. 583, "in its legal sense comprises four principal divisions�trusts for the relief of poverty: trusts for the advancement of education: trusts for the advancement of religion: and trusts for other purposes beneficial to the community not falling under any of the preceding heads." I cannot, however, find that such a contention has been put forward.

In the first two of these cases it seems to me that it was assumed, rather than decided, that a corporate charity was in the position of a trustee of its funds. Re Finder 's Will Trusts turned upon a question of whether or not a bequest to a charitable corporation, which ceased exist in the testatrix's lifetime, demonstrated a general charitable intention capable of permitting a cy-pres application.

In order to come within the Act the grant has to be for one or more of the three purposes mentioned in section 2 i.e. for the education of poor persons, or for the residence of a schoolmaster or schoolmistress, or otherwise for the purposes of the education of such poor persons in religious and useful knowledge.