vi deeply interested in a subject affecting the property of their Church and its charities), but to the public at large, who are sensible of the active interest which your Lordship has always taken in whatever was calculated to advance the true interests of the country, and the cause of charity and benevolence. I have the honour to remain, MY LORD, With sentiments of sincere respect and regard, Your Lordship's most obliged and humble servant, W. F. FINLASON. Temple, April 1853. PREFACE. WITHIN less than ten years there have been two committees on the laws of mortmain, as they are loosely called, or rather, (since the old laws of mortmain properly so called, are now nearly obsolete), the laws affecting alienation of land for pious purposes. That the subject is of deep interest this fact alone would indicate; and it is so equally to Catholics and to Protestants. 66 ra The modern law of mortmain, as it is popularly but improperly called, is a law against dispositions testamentary, or to take effect at death, for charitable purposes, and was passed, and is maintained, principally by reason of those prejudices which are to be attributed to the anti-Catholic traditions respecting the supposed pacity" of the Catholic clergy, and their tendency to enrich the Church by bequests procured from dying persons. But these prejudices, originally evoked against Catholic charity, have long since been directed against charity in general; and thus, by a curious retribution, the traditions which can be traced to a hatred of Catholicism have resulted in a law which now weighs most heavily on Protestantism. So false are these traditions, and so unfounded these prejudices, that the system of death-bed charity, supposed to have arisen in the "rapacity" of the Popish clergy, was unknown in this country until after the Reformation. Before that era, charity took the form chiefly of grants by the living; and almost all our old Catholic foundations were made by gift, not by last will. Indeed, until B the spoliations of the Reformation had commenced, devises of land for any purpose were not strictly allowed by law; and in the age when the greater portion of the religious houses were founded, were either not allowed or not practised. It was not until after the Reformation that death-bed charity was encouraged by acts of parliament passed expressly for the purpose of facilitating demises of land by last will to pious uses; and, for the first century or so of Protestantism, charity took chiefly, if not exclusively, that form. At the Revolution, when Catholics were not allowed to hold land at all, a feeling arose against this species of charity, unquestionably often spurious, and the result of the reaction was the Act of George II, commonly called the modern law of mortmain, but having really no relation to mortmain, and more properly called an act restraining dispositions of land, by way of devise or to take effect at death, for charitable purposes. The old mortmain law affected only the perpetuity of the persons or bodies politic holding the land; and not at all the purpose for which it was held, whether charitable or not; whereas the modern law points peculiarly to the purpose, applying only to · land alienated for charitable purposes, whether to persons or bodies corporate or not. In short, it is a law exclusively against charity, and was the first law of that. character ever passed in this country. Hence the history of the subject presents two great facts; that death-bed charity is Protestant in its character, and that a law against charity is Protestant in its origin. That is to say, on the one hand history shows that the result of Protestantism was, that charity took chiefly, if not exclusively, the form of death-bed dispositions, and that it then legislated to prohibit the only form of charity which it had left in the land. Thus, the question has great moral and religious as well as social and legal bearings. Another striking fact, running counter to popular prejudices and popular impressions upon the question, is, that in Catholic times in this country charitable and religious bequests were placed on the same footing as all |