§ MR. ALFRED DAVIESI beg to ask the hon. Member for the Tunbridge Division of Kent, as a Charity Commissioner, if his attention has been called to the Report of the Assistant Charity Commissioner, Mr. Marchant Williams, for the 1119 parish of Llansadwrn, Carmarthenshire, dated 8th August, 1900, which, on page 290, states that the trustees of Cornwallis's Charity, with the sanction of the Charity Commissioners, invested in 1877 £200 on a deposit account of the Carmarthen Branch of the National Provincial Bank of England at 3 per cent. per annum, which interest was invested for prizes to the children; and, seeing that, as stated in the Report, after a few years the distribution of prizes ceased and the capital sum disappeared, what steps have been taken against those responsible for the trust.
§ MR. GRIFFITH BOSCAWEN(1) The Charity Commissioners did not sanction the deposit of the £200 to which the Question refers. On the contrary, they pressed the trustees to invest it in Government securities, and, for that purpose, to transfer it to the account of the Official Trustees of Charitable Funds. (2) The sum in question was not capital, but was accumulated income, which it was within the competence of the trustees to expend on the objects of the Charity. (3) As the sum was income, and not capital, and was not great in amount, the Commissioners did not think it desirable to take any steps for enforcing their recommendation that it should be invested. (4) The present trustees of the Charity deny the statement that the sum in question has disappeared; and a close examination of the records in the office of the Commissioners indicates that it formed part of a sum of £400 which was, under an order of the Board of 27th January, 1888, transferred from the deposit account of the trustees to the Official Trustees of Charitable Funds, was invested by them in consols, and still remains so invested.
§ MR. ALFRED DAVIESWill the old trustees be re-appointed?
§ MR. GRIFFITH BOSCAWENI must ask for notice of that Question.