USES, CHARITABLE AND SUPERSTITIOUS. The term " Charitable Use," as understood in law, is of very extensive applica tion, and includes dispositions of property which cannot with any pro priety be described as charitable, but which are ao called with reference to the purposes enumerated in the statute 43 c. 4, or such as are considered analogous to them. That statute enacted that the Com missioners thereby empowered should inquire as to the lands, &c. given by well-disposed people "for relief of aged, impotent, and poor people ; for maintenance of sick and maimed soldiers and mariners ; schools of learning, free-schools, and scholars in universities ; for repair of bridges, ports, havens, causeways, churches, sea-banks, and highways; for edu cation and preferment of orphans ; for or towards the relief, stock, or maintenance of houses of correction ; for marriage of poor maids ; for sup portation, aid, and help of young tradesmen, handicraftsmen, and persons decayed ; and for relief or redemption of prisoners and captives, and for aid or ease of any poor inhabitants concerning payment of fifteens, setting out of soldiers, and other taxes." Many gifts not within the letter have been held to be within the equitable construction of this statute ; and when the gift is to charity in general, without any par ticular purpose being specified, it will be carried into effect either by the Crown or the Court of Chancery, upon principles which the deter initiations of that court have established. The term " Charitable Use," in law, is applied exclusively to gifts for what are called public chari ties, the objects of which are not particular individuals, but a class or the public in general.
A superstitious use, in its original sense, was where lands, tenements, rents, goods, or chattels were given, secured, or appointed for or towards any of the following purposes, namely : the maintenance of a priest or chaplain to may mane ; for the maintenance of a priest or other man to pray for the *mil of any dead man in such a church or elsewhere; to have or maintain perpetual obits, lamp, torches, &c., to be used at cer
tain times, to help to save the Soule of men out of purgatory. (See the 15 Rich. a. 5 ; 2:1 Hen. o. 10 ; and 1 Edw. VI., e. 14.) The statute of Richard II. was 'weed for the purpose of subjecting lands conveyed to uses to the LAW of mortmain. The statute of Henry VIII. relates only to assuranctss of lands to churches and chapels, which, if for a longer term than twenty years, it declares to be absolutely void. By the 1st of Edward VI. certain superstitious uses then existing were forfeited to the king, but the statute has no prospective operation. There is no etatuto making superstitious uses void generally, but the king, as head of the commonwealth, and as intrusted by the common law to see that nothing is done in maintenance or propagation of a false religion, was considered entitled to pray a discovery of a trust to a superstitious use, and to order the property to be applied to a proper use. The same principle has been applied to many cases of gifts of property for purposes which cannot properly be classed as superstitious uses, but are either expressly prohibited by the LAW of the country or contrary to its policy. A change in the doctrine of superstitious uses has been made by the 2 & 3 Wm. IV., c. 115, which puts persons pro fessing the Roman Catholio religion upon the same footing, with respect to their schools, places for religious worship, education and charitable purposes, as Protestant Dissenters ; with respect to whom the doctrine of the court is, that it will administer a fund to maintain a society of Protestant Dissenters promoting no doctrine contrary to law, though at variance with that of the Established Church. The 2 & 3 Win. IV., c. 115, is retrospective. (2 M. & K. 225.) The Court of Chancery has a general jurisdiction over property given for charitable purposes, and the regular mode in which matters relating to charities are brought before it is by information by the attorney-general on behalf of the crown.