The Court of Chancery adopts a very liberal construction of gifts for charitable purposes; and there are numerous cases of gifts for objects not within the letter of the statute of Elizabeth, which have been con sidered to be within the equitable meaning of the word charity as understood in that court, and have been administered accordingly. And when a gift is made for charity generally, without any purpose specified, if the gift he to trustees, the court will order a scheme to be prepared for the direction of tho trustees in the administration of the trust ; and where the declared object is charity, but no trust has been interposed, the right to dispose of the property, and to declare the par ticular charitable purposes to which it is to be applied, belongs to the crown by sign-manual. Where the particular objects which the donor had in view fail, either wholly or in part, the court adopts what is called the principle of administration cy-pres, that is, it directs the property to be applied to worthy objects in its judgment most nearly resembling those which have failed, or when more than one charity has been named by the donor, to such of the others as are still subsisting. When the revenue of the property increases from any cause, the increase goes to the charity, if it appear to have been the intention of the donor that the whole should be disposed of in that manner; otherwise the increase will go to the legal representative of the donor. In cases where the revenue of the property was distributable among several charities, the question has been, in what manner the increase of income was to be disposed of among them. The principle established by the cases seems to be, that a charity to which a fixed annual sum has beeri given has uo right to participate in the increase, but that one entitled with the other charities to a proportionate part of the original income will have a right to a similar proportion of the Increase.
When property is given to a superstitious use, or for a charitable purpose which the law will not allow to be carried into effect, the court, upon the not very satisfactory ground that the property was meant for a charity, will apply it to some other charity of which it approves. In the words of Sir William Grant, " Whenever a testator is disposed to be charitable in his own way and upon Ids own prin ciples, we are not content with disappointing his intention, if die approved by us : but we make him charitable iu our way and on our principles. if once we discover in him any charitable intention, that is supposed to be so liberal as to take in objects not only not within his iutention, but wholly adverse to it." (7 Ves., 495.) If the superstitious use be one which the court considers charitable, the fund goes to the king to be disposed of to such charitable uses as he shall direct by sign-manual :_if the use be not charitable, the gift is merely void, and the property will go to tho donor's representative. (2 M. it K., 684.) The regular mode of proceeding in cases of abuse of charitable funds was until recently by way of information in the name of the attorney general on behalf of the crown. But the act 16 & 17 Viet. c. 137,
known as the Charitable Trusts Act, has, without abolishing the functions of the attorney-general with respect to charities, provided a regular machinery of commissioners and inspectors, whose duty it is to investigate all cases that may be brought to their notice, and to institute such proceedings as may be necessary for the rectification of abuses.
The jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery over property given to charity must be distinguished from the authority frequently exercised by the lord chancellor or lord keeper as visitor of charities. Charities are either under the management of individual trustees, or are esta blished by charter as eleemosynary corporations. On the Institution the Romans expressed it), its efficiency and completeness to what was in its origin incomplete; and the phrase Usus Auetoritas was older than the expression Usucapio, which was afterwards the ordinary term. But Uaua by itself never signified Usucapio ; for Usus alone could uot give a title to the ownership of a thing. In the case of public land the possessor had the usus, but this was all that he could be entitled to as possessor. Such usus could not from the nature of the case have an auctoritas, for the possessor did not occupy the public land as a bona fide purchaser. A man might also have the usus of private land without having a title to anything further : in which case also the usus could never have an auctoritas. In the Roman law, as known to us in the Pandects, Usucapio appears as a mode of acquisition, which must have been owing to the circumstance of Mancipatio ceasing to be re garded as important : for bare tradition in all cases, followed by the proper usus, gave complete ownership. Finally, when the difference between Res Mancipi and Nec Mancipi was abolished, Usucapio in its original sense ceased. But as in the time of Gains we find Usucapio applicable to the case of things Nee Maneipi, which a person had possessed bona fide, this rule of law still continued, and various limita tions were in course of time established as to the mode of acquiring the ownership of a thing by the enjoyment of it. Thus Justinian, in his ' Institutes' (ii., tit. 6), after reciting the old law, refers to one of his Constitutions, by which the ownership of moveables might be acquired by use (usneapiantur), provided there was a bona fide possession (junta cattaa pussessionis pnrcedente) for three years, and that of im movable things by the " longi temporis possessio," which he explains to be ten years " inter praaientes," and twenty years " inter absentes ;" and the Constitution applied to the whole empire. Usucapio is defined in the 'Digest' (41, 3, 3) to be the " addition of ownership by the uninterrupted possession for a time fixed by law." As it was the addi tion of ownership, something is-here implied to which this addition was to be made ; and this something was a bona fide possession.
The subject of Usucapio admits and requires a much more complete exposition. The reader may refer to the following works : Engelbach ' Ueber die Usucapiun zur Zeit der zwolf Tafeln; Marburg, 1825; and Muhlenbruch, ' Doctrina Pandectarum.'