In the Scotch Case, where the cost of building was £20,000, the gross assessment seems to have been £2,425. In both these cases stress was laid upon the fact that no profit could be or was expected to be derived from the undertaking; which appears to suggest that an alteration in the law is required doing away entirely with all assessments of property acquired under the Public Health Acts, not with a view of profit but solely for the public good. Indeed, the same considerations which have caused hospitals to be always exempted, speak loudly for the exemption also of all properties which are run solely on account of the public health, and which apart from this have no value.

Reverting to the general subject of this paper, it may naturally occur to the mind, what a clause passed in the year 18881 can have to do with corporations which were already flourishing in great numbers in the year 1842. The answer is, that there was a section dealing with the matter in the Act of the year 1842, but that events have rendered it antiquated and out of date. When the Act of 1842 was passed it was supposed to be for only small number of years, and the sections were drawn accordingly. By sect. 102 the liability of the "proper officer" of the corporation is to account for the interest of the preceding year according to the rules of the third case under which it is put. Lord Macnaghten in his judgment in AttorneyGeneral v. London County Council gives an excellent description of the circumstances which caused the enactment of 1888 to be passed. On the whole it meets the case of corporations very well, although it was never intended for them. It only wants such alterations as above suggested to make it unexceptionable.

I cannot leave this subject without referring to the position in which corporations and other public bodies stand in this matter. They are really great syndicates 1 51 & 52 Vict., c. 8, s. 24 (3). 2 L. R. [1901], A. C. 26.

which have become guarantors of all the undertakings they have in hand. They can make no profits, but must make good every loss. No doubt it would be easy enough for the servant of a corporation to pay whatever was demanded of him by the taxing officers and draw his salary contentedly till the time of retirement came. But many of the servants of corporations do not see their duty in this light they look at matters through the ratepayers' spectacles, or rather it might be said through the spectacles which the ratepayers should use, but perhaps do not.

It is hoped that this paper will cause attention to be directed to these matters, so that a happier day may dawn for all parties concerned.

E. J. MOORE.

IV. THE LAW OF THE UNIVERSITIES.

III. VISITATION.

(b) The Colleges.

ISITATION of Colleges rests on Common law as far

VISI

as it is not affected by statutes of the realm,1 or of colleges. At Common law "all eleemosynary corporations who are to receive the charity of the founder have visitors, if they are ecclesiastical corporations; and if a particular visitor is not provided by the founder, then the ordinary of the place is visitor: if they are lay corporations, the founder and his heirs are perpetual visitors." The right of visitation is in law an incorporeal hereditament. The visitatorial power is a necessary incident of an eleemosynary corporation. "It is," says Mr. Justice Story, "a power to 1 E. g., 20 & 21 Vict., c. 25, as to Queen's.

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2 As at Worcester, where the old composite visitor (the Bishops of Oxford and Worcester and the Vice-Chancellor) was replaced by the Lord Chancellor.

R. v. Blythe [1699], 5 Mod. 404.

▲ Appleford's Case [1672], 1 Mod. 82, where a mandamus to restore a fellow of New College, who had been deprived by the visitor, was refused.

correct abuses and to enforce due observance of the statutes of the charity, but not a power to revoke the gifts, to change uses, or to divest rights." The Courts do not take judicial notice that a college has a visitor, the fact must be proved. The chief duties of the visitor of a college at present are confirmation of the head, interpretation of the statutes, and to act as a court of appeal on application by a member, or one claiming to be a member, of the foundation. His power of expulsion or deprivation, though still competent, has been little exercised in modern times. His power of appointment of a head on lapse frequently found in old statutes, seldom or never exists now. Though colleges are charities, they are exempt from the control of the Charity Commission. The fact that bishops are so often visitors is perhaps due partly to the convenience of creating a higher sanction by adding ecclesiastical to visitatorial authority, partly to the original position of some of the older colleges as quasi-ecclesiastical corporations. At present they are lay corporations, though every member be in holy orders. The only college which is to any extent an ecclesiastical corporation is Christ Church, where the dean and chapter share the government with the students. Possibly the Crown is ordinary of the realm,

visitor of Christ Church as supreme as well as by virtue of being founder. In case of disability

1 Allen v. Mc Kean [1833], 2 Sumner (U. S.) 276.

2 He may even confirm the election of the candidate with the minority of votes, as where the Earl of Pembroke confirmed the election of Dr. Wynne at Jesus, Oxford, in 1712. This proceeding was perhaps suggested by the postulatio of Canon Law, Decretals, i, 6.

8 Welch v. Hall [1675], 3 Keble, 543.

▲ Fisher v. Dean of Christ Church, above. For prescription for discharge from tithe, a college may claim as a spiritual corporation where it is alienee of abbey lands, Bowles v. Atkins [1666], 2 Keble, 28.

The anomalous position of Christ Church has led to the frequent assertion in Acts of Parliament (e. g., 21 & 22 Vict., c. 44, s. 31), that Christ Church is for the purposes of the particular Act to be deemed a college. In some Acts (e. g., 21 & 22 Vict., c. 94), it is provided that for the purposes of the Act the words "ecclesiastical corporation" are not to include Christ Church. This evidently shows that without such express exception it might be considered to be such a corporation.

by infancy, lunacy, or otherwise of the visitor, or heir of the visitor appointed by the founder, or where the founder has appointed no visitor, or has only appointed a visitor to part of the foundation, or there is a failure of heirs of the founder,2 or the Crown is founder, the right of visitation is in the Crown, and is exercised by delegation through the Lord Chancellor. The Crown may confer the visitation as a franchise on a subject. It is a disputed point whether the Crown can confer inheritance of a visitation, but the better opinion is that it can. When the visitor has been elected head, and so visitor and visited combine in the same person,* the King's Bench visits during the temporary combination. The mode of bringing a case before the Lord Chancellor is by petition, not by information. By sect. 17 of the Judicature Act 1873, it was enacted that there should not be transferred to the High Court of Justice any jurisdiction exercised by the Lord Chancellor in right of or on behalf of His Majesty as visitor of any college. It should be noticed. that no technical words are necessary for the creation of a visitor. In the case of Clare the appointment of the Chancellor as visitor was gathered by the Court from the interpretation of the statutes.6

1 A.-G. v. Dixie [1807], 13 Ves. 519.

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2 As in the case of St. Catharine's, Cambridge, after the failure of heirs of Wodelarke, the founder, R. v. St. Catharine's College [1791], 4 T. R. 233. The same thing happened at Trinity Hall, Ex parte Wrangham, below.

3 Where the visitor is visitor of a part, the Crown only visits the residue. But new foundations generally fall under the old visitor. (Jennings' Case [1699], 5 Mod. 422.)

This happened in the case of the College of Manchester, R. v. Bishop of Chester [1727], 2 Str. 727. It is only poetically and not legally true that a man may be himself the judge and counsel and himself the prisoner at the bar. R. v. St. Catharine's College.

6 The result was that the Chancellor was held to be visitor. Even if no visitatorial authority be expressly given by the founder, the visitor has it as incident to his office. R. v. Warden of All Souls [1682], T. Jones, 175. Ex parte Wrangham [1795], 2 Ves. Jun. 609, was before the Lord Chancellor as visitor of Trinity Hall; and Davison's Case [1772], Cowp. 319, before him as visitor of University, as delegate of the Crown.

Decisions of visitors seldom occur in the ordinary law reports. Many of them turned on tenure of fellowships and on the meaning to be given to "founder's kin," of which the most important example is Spencer v. All Souls College (see below). Another All Souls case was Watson v. All Souls College. The latest reported case seems to be one in 1866, where the Lord Chancellor, sitting as visitor, sanctioned the appropriation of part of the revenue of Christ Church in aid of the stipend of the Regius Professor of Greek. In the histories of the various colleges there are continual allusions to appeals to the visitors, and there also exist pamphlets on certain cases which excited interest at the time.3

A glance at the names of the visitors as they appear in the university calendars gives some interesting results. The Crown is the most frequent visitor, not only of royal foundations but of others, such as University and St. Catharine's, by lapse of founders' heirs or otherwise. The Bishop of Winchester is visitor of five colleges at Oxford, the Bishop of Ely of four at Cambridge, originally no doubt as ordinaries. The only college which has for visitor the descendant of the founder is Sidney, of which Lord de L'Isle and Dudley is visitor. Jesus, Oxford, has the Earls of Pembroke for hereditary visitors. Balliol has the unique privilege of

1 [1864], 11 L. T. Rep. 166. The report of the Commission, 329, mentions a decision of Archbishop Cornwallis in 1777. Founder's kin may still be of occasional importance, as at St. John's, Oxford, and Hertford. Jesus, Oxford, and several others still have close fellowships and scholarships.

2 L. R., I Ch. 526.

8 See, for instance, the Proceedings of Corpus Christi College in the case of Francis Ayscough vindicated (1730). He was a probationer fellow whom the college refused to elect actual fellow. The visitor reversed the decision of the college. The proceedings are described in T. Fowler, History of Corpus Christi College, 278. In the same college lately the President was elected by an ex-fellow who had not been re-elected at the proper date. The visitor held that the election was good, the re-election being retrospective.

It is also visitor of Corpus, Cambridge, in extraordinary cases, but the interpretative authority under the new statutes is a board consisting of the ViceChancellor and two Regius Professors.

5 The third Earl of Pembroke was not the founder, but was Chancellor at the time of the foundation.