THE CHARITY COMMISSION.
THE Report of the Select Committee of last Session on the working of the Charity Commission is eminently readable. Considerable excitement has been aroused in the country among widely-separated sections of people, and on a great variety of topics, by the action of the Charity Commis- sioners in carrying-out the duties imposed on them, and by proposals, both long-standing and quite recent, for the exten- sion of their powers. The immediate occasion of the sitting of the Select Committee was the reintroduction into Par- liament, in 1883, of a Bill embodying certain recommenda- tions made by a Committee half a century ago, founded upon the inquiries of a Commission which had then been sitting for seventeen years, and which did not finally conclude its labours till 1837. That occasion has been seized for a general assault upon the Commission all along the line. The Commissioners have been placed upon their trial on a series of the most various and, indeed, conflict- ing charges preferred by the supporters of the most contradictory views of public affairs. The most stubborn Tories have raised the cry of confiscation on one side, while the most ardent Radicals have protested against the withholding of rights from the people on the other. Churchmen and Dissenters, charity trustees and charity donees, the rich and the poor, have found one common foe in the Charity Commission. On the whole, it must be admitted that they have come out of the battle wonderfully well. The senior Commissioner, Sir Seymour Fitzgerald, was riddled by the cross-examination by Mr. John Morley and Mr. H. Fowler ; but Mr. Longley, the Com- missioner by whom the brunt of the attack was borne, made a sturdy and, if the Report of the Committee alone be regarded, triumphant defence.
On the general working of their administration, the Report not only enters a verdict of "Not guilty," and declares that they leave the Court without a stain upon their character, but also gives a positive testimonial to their merits, by endorsing the Bill of 1883, and recommending an extension of their authority. Apart from the conduct of the Commission in regard to the Allotment Extension Act, to which we will refer another time, the two main accusations against the Commission appear to have been that they trampled on the Trustees of Charities, and wished to trample on them still more ; and that they showed a persistent hostility to the interests of Noncon- formists. The direct interests of the Nonconformists have clearly not been neglected, for the secretary of the Committee of Wesleyan Societies, before whom all the Wesleyan Trusts come for consideration, stated that in three years alone no less than 1,770 applications by Wesleyan bodies had been made to and granted by the Commission. Another Nonconformist, the clerk to the trustees of the Countess of Huntingdon's Con- nexion, expressed his opinion that the Commission did its work excellently, and only wished that they had power to alter their articles of faith as well as the mode in which the Trusts were administered. In the end, the Nonconformist case came to this, that in many cases undenominational charity moneys had been applied to building or assisting the so-called National or Church of England schools, and that the parson and churchwardens were given too great power and- pre-eminence in parochial charities. But it was shown that no general charity money was given to National Schools since the Education Act of 1870 had established public elementary schools ; and before the funds were only so applied when there was no undenominational school to which they., could be given. As to the clergyman and church- wardens, they were nearly always found to be the sole trustees of parochial charities, and were simply kept on as trustees, but generally with the addition of new ones. Further, in many instances, especially of late, the Commissioners had fought for the introduction of Nonconformists into bodies of trustees of undenominational Trusts. It is, however, to be regretted that, as a matter of fact, Nonconformists are not represented on Charity Boards in due proportion to their numbers and wealth, and that the Commission have been so extremely conservative in retaining the clergyman and.churchwardens as the leading feature of Parochial Charity Boards. It is, for many reasons, desirable to diminish the ecclesiastical element in charities, apart altogether from the particular sect which is selected for predominance. It is clear, however, that if this defence is not wholly conclusive on the charge of paying too little attention to those outside the Church of England, it is a conclusive answer to the other charge of paying too little attention to the Trustees. The administration of the Charitable Trust Acts breaks down in fact, owing to the excessive attention paid by Parlia- ment, and, therefore, by the Commission, to the Trustees, and to the letter of the Trusts. When, in 1853, the Commission was first established, it was originally proposed to bring every charity under its purview on the application of a single Trustee or of any two inhabitants of the place for the benefit of which the Trust exists. But, unfortunately, an amendment was introduced by which, in the case of charities with incomes of over £50 a year, the consent of a majority of the Trustees was necessary. The result has been disastrous. Trustees will not as a body bring themselves under control. Many Trusts are practically managed by solicitors. Management and legal pickings are too good to be given up. The consequence is, Trust-moneys are abused for personal pur- poses, even when there is no actual fraud, though actual fraud is by no means uncommon. In many cases, the whole property has disappeared. Since 1837, out of 181 charities recorded as existing in the single parish of St. Luke's, Middlesex, 39 have been wholly lost; in Oxford, out of 126, 44 have dis- appeared. In Browne's Hospital at Stamford, twelve alms-people, who cost £369 a year, are supervised by ,two parsons, called a warden and a confrater, who cost £575 a year. Again, in a charity with an income of £95, the solicitor got .R32 costs for appointing a new trustee ; and in another, with an income of £421, he netted £75. If the trust is brought under the Commission, the property is vested in official trustees, and the appointment of a new trustee costs the charity ten shillings for a deed-stamp, and twopence or so for postage. Then, again, if the trustees will not come in, the Commissioners can, in certain cases, set the Attorney-General at them. The results, in that case, are even more pleasing to the solicitors. For instance, in one case of a charity uith £900 a year, it cost £800 to compel it to come in, the costs of the trustees being, of course, paid out of the charity into the pockets of the solicitors. At Sheffield, again, where there is a magnificent foundation, with an income of £5,000 a year, a new scheme was wanted in 1872; but instead of going to the Commissioners, as they might have done, the Trustees preferred going for a private Bill in Parliament, with its incidental delights to the lawyers.
In answer to the inquiry why the Trustees refuse to come to the Commission, they generally plead their terror of the Official Trustee, in whom the trust property is required to be vested, who robs them of their liberty in management, and so on. But as a matter of fact, the Official Trustee is merely a nominis unthra. When property is placed in his name, it is true that the capital cannot be made away with, and that the chances of. running-up bills of costs are annihilated or greatly dimin- ished; but as a matter of fact the management of the income, the leasing of land, and the application of the funds subject to any scheme, are left to the Trustees just as before. Another reason given is, that there is no freedom of investment allowed, and that the Commission adheres entirely to the sweet simplicity of the Three per Cents., to the loss of the Charity. In the first place, this is not strictly true, as the Commission often alhms funds to remain invested as they were ; in the nest place, they very properly hold that the Funds and land are the proper and ordinary Trustees investments. And, oddly enough, this objection was most strongly urged by the representatives of Christ's Hospital, who admit the possession of Trust property of nearly half-a-million in the Funds, the rest being in land and houses ; in fact, the very investments, adopted by the Commission. The case of Christ's Hospital, as presented to the Committee, was, indeed, a typical one. That charity was, apparently at the instigation of its solicitor, the leader of an organised opposition to the Bills of 1881 and 1883. It was represented by its Treasurer and Solicitor before the Committee. The Treasurer objected to the Com- mission having power to make schemes without notice to the Trustees, when, as a matter of fact, the Act expressly pro- vides that notice must be given to the Trustees before a. scheme is made ; and to vesting the property in the official Trustee, because he would interfere with the management, when, as a matter of fact, he is a " bare " trustee ; he admitted that the "charitable donation" of £500 which a man was expected to give on being made a Governor gave him patronage worth at least £1,000; and finally, he admitted that he had not read and did not under- stand the Bills he was so urgent in opposing. But the Solicitor fared even worse. After starting various pro- spective evils (such as the difficulty of getting Trustees, if their names had to be submitted to the Commission for approval), of which evils he could not produce a single actual instance, he had to confess that after all "his objection came to nothing more than to the Charity Commissioners exer- cising," not new functions, but "functions already exercised by and vested in the Chancery Division;" and he confessed further that the former performed the function better than the latter. If the Committee had done hothing more than expose the selfish- ness, prejudice, and ignorance on which the Tory opposition to the Commission is founded, they would have done good work. They have, however, done more. The evidence con- clusively shows the urgent need that there is for the extension of the power of the Commission to all charitable endowments, by vesting the capital in them, by giving them powers of audit, including power to surcharge similar to the powers exercised by the Local Government Board over local govern- ments, and by widening the scope of the new schemes which they may make, subject to a veto by Parliament such as that given to schemes made by the Universities Commis- sion and to the schemes of the Commissioners themselves when acting under the Endowed Schools Acts. It has also been shown that the Commission needs strengthening in two ways ; first, inside the office by an increase of staff ; and still more outside by giving direct powers of advice and suggestion to Local Governments in framing schemes, and by giving them a greater voice in the nomination of the Trustees who are to carry out the schemes when made. For the realisation of the full benefit of this latter proposal, we shall have to wait for the long-promised representative County Boards. Meanwhile, seeing that, on the average of the last few years, over 400 new charities are founded yearly, and that of 41,000 charities known to exist, the Commission only succeeds in getting the accounts of about 25,000, it is evident that the pious founder of the present is not discouraged by the existence of the Com- mission, and that the pious founder of the past would profit greatly by an extension of their powers.
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