§ MR. CHANNING (Northampton, E.)asked the hon. Member for Penrith, as a Charity Commissioner, Whether the Charity Commissioners have made a scheme by which the yearly sum of £700 and accumulations amounting to £8,000 belonging to "Attwell's Charity" are to be applied by the Skinners' Company for a Middle School for Girls; whether the will of Laurence Attwell provided that the rents and profits should, from time to time, be employed in some good sort whereby poor people, and especially such as are free of the Company, may be set on work, and yet the stocks kept and remain whole, and 1289 increase yearly into the revenues of the said kinds; whether he can state what is now the income and what is the amount of the accumulations belonging to "Attwell's Charity;" and, whether the Charity Commissioners will provide for the application of a reasonable part of the Trust income to giving employment to the poor?
§ MR. J. W. LOWTHER (Cumberland, Penrith)The first two paragraphs of the hon. Member's Question are correct so far as they go. The original Trusts of the will of Laurence Attwell, however, were displaced in 1828 by a decree of the Court of Chancery, which directed that the income of the Endowment should be applied in loans to young men of good character, beginners in some trade or business, with a preference to members of the Skinners' Company. Since the date of the scheme of the Court of Chancery no part of the Endowment has been applicable in the manner desired by the hon. Member; and the Commissioners have no power by statute, or otherwise, to appropriate loan funds in such manner. From the last accounts furnished to the Commissioners it appears that the property of the Charity consists of real estate, yielding a gross income of £ 1,083 17s. 6d., and of an accumulated sum of £5,745 13s. 5d. New Three per Cent. Annuities.