84 Pa. 286 | Pa. | 1877
delivered the opinion of the court,
After a denial of some of the material allegations of the plaintiffs, the defendants concluded their answer by a general demurrer to the whole bill. All embarrassment that might have arisen in the investigation of the cause from controverted facts has thus been averted. The argument throughout has recognised the truth of the averments of the bill, and has proceeded precisely as if no answer had been filed. While the counsel for the defendants have explained that a motive so laudable as their “high regard for truth,” has prompted their denial of the statements of the plaintiffs, they have still expressly acquiesced in and accepted the effect of the demurrer.
A warrant was issued out of the land office of the proprietaries of Pennsylvania on the 8th of May 1744, to Henry Haller and Peter Frey for a tract of land in the township of Oocalico, in the county of Lancaster, to be held in trust for the Calvinist Reformed and Lutheran congregations of that township, Haller being the representative of the first congregation and Frey the representative of the second. By a deed-poll dated the 16th of May 1761, Peter Frey conveyed his interest in the warrant to Jacob Frey, subject to the same trust. On the 5th of February 1762 a survey was made and the quantity of land ascertained to be nine acres and sixty perches. A patent was issued on the 25th of March 1762, to Haller and Jacob Frey and their heirs and assigns, “ in trust, nevertheless, and to and for the use of the said two several congregations of Calvinists and Lutherans, for the time being, and their successors for ever, using and frequenting, and to use and frequent, the respective churches and meeting-houses erected and to be erected, from time to time, on said land, and for burial-yards for them respectively, in such manner as the majority of each of the said congregations respectively shall, from time to
In October 1872, Daniel Kessler and others, claiming to be officers and members of the Reformed congregation, and Joseph Zorber and others, claiming to be officers and members of the Lutheran congregation, obtained a charter of incorporation by a decree of the Court of Common Pleas of Lancaster, under the title of “ The Independent Associate German Reformed and German Lutheran Muddy Creek Church of East Cocalico Township.” The fourth article declared: “ Each congregation, though .the two by this charter form but one congregation, shall continue to have the right to hold whatever property they now have, own and possess, as heretofore, and to take and receive bequests, donations and legacies, as individual congregations; to have the right, as separate congregations, to call and employ such ministers and other persons as they may severally require, and to order and provide, by their by-laws, rules and regulations, how disputes and difficulties are to be arranged, settled and compromised, that may arise between the
In the consideration of this cause, the first question that presents itself is whether or not the jurisdiction of a court of equity was properly invoked. It is clear upon ample authority that the original articles of agreement created a charitable use, to which the legal title derived from the warrant, survey and patent became subservient. The English statute of 43 Elizabeth never was in force in Pennsylvania, but its principles have constantly been applied here by common usage and under constitutional recognition : Brightly’s Eq., § 398. “We consider,” Chief Justice Gibson said, in Witman v. Lex, 17 S. & R. 91, “ the principles which chancery has adopted in their application to particular cases, as obtaining here, not indeed by force of the statute, but as part of the common law ; and where the object is defined, and we are not restrained by the inadequacy of the instrument which we are compelled to employ, we give relief nearly, if not altogether, to that extent which chancery does in England.” The rules deducible from the English chancery precedents for the construction of the statute of Elizabeth, may be safely trusted, therefore, to illustrate questions which arise in the current practice of our own courts. In The Attorney General v. Heelis, 2 Sim. & Stu. 67, one of those rules was stated by the vice-chancellor to be that “funds supplied from the gift of the crown, or from the legislature, or from private gift for a legal, general and public purpose, are charitable funds to be administered by courts of equity.” And this rule has been adopted in this state to its full extent. Thus, in Unangst v. Shortz, 5 Whart. 506, which was a contest amongst persons claiming as members of the German Lutheran and German Reformed congregations of the Dry Lands, under articles of agreement by which the rights of the congregations, and the privileges, powers and duties of their officers and members, were prescribed, Mr. Justice Sergeant said: “ The articles of agreement form the fun
Large numbers of individuals were connected with each of these congregations. The contest between the parties to the record related to powers and privileges in which all those individuals were entitled to participate. If they_ had desired it, they could have demanded a hearing and have been heard. To them damages which might be recovered by the plaintiffs would afford not only no adequate remedy, but no remedy at all. A resort to the criminal process of surety of the peace would be equally inadequate, and would produce scandalous and unseemly conflicts. Religious societies are entitled to a more appropriate legal protection of their secular and "spiritual interests than would consist in the power to appeal to a criminal court or a justice of the peace. Here, as in Kisor’s Appeal, 12 P. F. Smith 428, “ by reason of numbers, and of the character of the rights of the parties, damages are unsuitable as a means of redress, and the case admits of no adequate relief at law. Equity alone can apply the required remedy, while the malcontents can be restrained only by the powers of a chancellor.” In the same case, the remark of Chief Justice Lowrie, in Kerr v. Trego, 11 Wright 296, was quoted,' that a bill in equity “ is the very remedy usually adopted when churches divide into parties, and we applied it in three such cases in the last year.” In the words of Mr. Justice Sharswood, in Roshi’s Appeal, 19 P. F. Smith 462,
Confessedly, the jdaintiffs are representatives of the majority of the members of both the churches. By the terms of the patent, the land granted and the buildings to be erected on it were to be used and frequented “in such manner as the majority of each of the said congregations should.from time order, direct and appoint.” It has not been alleged that there has been any departure from the rules and usages of the denominations to which they respectively belong. In simple truth, the one element of disturbance has been the existence of a dissatisfied and restive minority in each church. While the general principle of law is that in private associations the majority cannot bind the minority except By special agreement, yet the principle is equally general that where-the power is of a public nature, the majority shall gbvern, because it is for the public good, and the power is to be more favorably expounded than when it is for private purposes: Attorney-General v. Davy, 2 Atk. 212; Withnell v. Gartham, 6 Term R. 388; Livingston v. Lynch, 4 Johns. Ch. 573. A majority of a church congregation may direct and control in church matters consistently with the particular and general laws of the organism or denomination to which it belongs: Sutter v. Trustees of the First Reformed Dutch Church, 6 Wright 503. Acting within the limits and under the rules of the original articles of association, the power of the majority of the members of
But the defendants rely on their charter. If the effect claimed for it were necessarily to be conceded, the most easily contrived and most flexible possible machinery would have been invented for the creation of church organizations and the acquisition of church property. The petitioners for incorporation styled themselves officers and members of the congregations. But they were outside all regular and legal congregational action. As officers they had never been elected in any duly prescribed form or by any qualified constituency. They represented no interests entitled to representation. The act of the court neither created nor transferred title to property or to ecclesiastical authority and jurisdiction. Conceding that the court’s exercise of the legislative power vested in it, was equivalent to the direct exercise of that power by the legislature itself, yet an Act of Assembly could not have shifted the title derived from the articles of 1761 from the jdaintiffs to the defendants. It was settled in the Commonwealth v. Jarrett, 7 S. & R. 460, that a minority of the persons in whom a trust of a schoolhouse and a school was vested, could not by associating and procuring a charter of incorporation under the Act of April 1791, acquire the right to the management of them in opposition to the will of the majority of those interested. It is not proposed to overturn or otherwise interfere with any legitimate powers of the defendants as corporators. No inquiry into the validity of the charter would be possible in this collateral proceeding. But under it the defendants claim the franchise to control the temporal and spiritual concerns of these churches. The Act of the 19th of June 1871, Pamph. L. 1360, makes it the duty of this court to inquire whether the franchise claimed is actually possessed: Edgewood Railroad Co.’s Appeal, 29 P. F. Smith 257. The power to manage the churches and their property has descended to the officers who have been duly chosen. The charter may be useful somewhere, but it has no place here. Whatever its value and in whatever direction the franchises it has conferred may be exercised, it is mere waste-paper, and its place would be more appropriate in a waste-basket than among the files of a court of justice, so far as its provisions relate to the organization, the land, or the church building of these congregations.
The decree of the Court of Common Pleas is reversed, and it is now ordered, adjudged and decreed that a writ of injunction be forthwith issued out of the said court to be directed to Jacob Deitrieh, Henry Lausch, Jacob Lausch, Samuel Erey, Joel Brossman, Michael Smith, John Zerber, Isaac Zerber, Jacob Garner, Daniel