84 Pa. 297 | Pa. | 1877
delivered the opinion of the court,
The foundation upon which the doctrine of charitable uses rests in this state is firmly settled. While the statute of 43 Elizabeth is not in force, the principles which the English chancery has adopted on the subject obtain here, not by virtue of the statute, but as part of our common law. The fact is that those principles were recognised and applied in England before the statute, which only introduced a new remedy. Hence trusts for charities with us have always been upheld and enforced, no matter how uncertain were the objects, and though the effect evidently was to create a perpetuity. These have never been allowed as objections to their validity. Yet before the year 1855 it was a clear and well-settled rule that when the objects of the charity were uncertain, there must be vested somewhere in a competent trustee or trustees the discretion absolutely necessary to carry them into effect by selecting those objects. By the provision of the tenth section of the Act of Assembly, passed April 25th 1855, entitled “An Act relating to corporations and to estates held for corporate, religious and charitable uses,” Pamph. L. 331, this rule is impliedly recognised and a remedy enacted for future cases, in which the donor or testator has
We are inclined to concede the truth and correctness of this com tention as of the date of Mr. Mann’s will, and that at that time the Court of Common Pleas was not competent either itself or by a trustee to be appointed by it to exercise such a discretion as the testator intended to confide in it. But in 1878, when Mr. Mann died and his will went into effect, the legislature, by a general law, had vested in the Court of Common Pleas, being a “ court having equity jurisdiction in the proper county,” as a judicial function the duty of carrying into effect the intent of a donor or testator, where-ever in a disposition of property for charitable uses thereafter to be made, there was either no trustee or it “ depended upon the discretion of a last trustee.” The will of Mr. Mann was ambulatory until
Judgment affirmed.