ELEEMOSYNARY CORPORATIONS. Such private corporations as are instituted for pur poses of charity, their object being the dis tribution of the bounty of the founder of them to such persons as he directed. Of this kind are hospitals for the relief of the im potent, indigent, sick, and deaf or dumb; Ang. & A. Corp. § 39 ; American Asylum at Hartford v. Bank, 4 Conn. 172, 10 Am. Dec. 112 ; McKim v. Odom, 3 Bland (Md.) 407; 1 Ld. Raym; 5; 2 Term 346. The nature of eleemosynary corporations is discussed in the Dartmouth College case. They are in uo sense ecclesiastical corporations as under stood in the classification of Blackstone. Marshall, C. J., said, in distinguishing the college from n public corporation employed for the purposes of government, that it was in fact a private eleemosynary institution en dowed with capacity to take property for objects unconnected with government, whose funds were bestowed by individuals on the faith of the charter—none the less 'so be cause for public education ; Dartmouth Col lege v. Woodward, 4 Wheat. 518, 630, 4 L. Ed: 629. And in the same case, Story, J., discussed at length the nature of these cor porations, defining them as "such as are con stituted for the perpetual distribution of the free alms and bounty, of the founder in such manner as he has directed"; and then, after ptdiliting out the division of corporations into public and private, he goes on to explain that eleemosynary corporations are private corpo rations although dedicated to general char ity, and that the argument that because the charity is public, the corporation is public, "manifestly confounds the popular with the strictly legal sense of the terms." He also
calls attention to the fact that "to all eleemosynary corporations a visitorial pow er attaches as a necessary incident." See VISITATION.
In the same opinion it is said that a pri vate eleemosynary corporation, when created by the charter of the crown, is subject to no other control of the crown unless power be reserved for that, purpose, and this he char acterizes as "one of the most stubborn and well-settled doctrines of the common law" ; but nevertheless such corporations, like all otbers, are subject to the general law of the land. See, also, Society for Propagation of Gospel v. New Haven, 8 Wheat. (U. S.) 464, 5 L. Ed. 662 ; 1 Bla. Com. 471.
"In the English law corporations are divided into ecclesiastical and lay; and lay corportions are again divided into eleemosynary and civil. It is doubtful how far clear conceptions of the law are promoted by keeping in mind these divisions. They seem, for us at least, to have an historical, rather than a practical, .value, In a country where the church is totally disassociated from the state, there is little room for a division of corporations into ecclesiastical and lay;' and while charitable corpo rations have many features which distinguish them from other private corporations, as will hereafter appear, it is very seldom that the word 'civil' is used in our •merican books of reports in order to distinguish corporations other than charitable."