The learned Bishop Stillingfleet’s argument in the same cause, as a member of the House of Lords, when it was there heard, exhibits very clearly the nature of colleges and similar corporations.  It is to the following effect:  “That this absolute and conclusive power of visitors is no more than the law hath appointed in other cases, upon commissions of charitable uses:  that the common law, and not any ecclesiastical canons, do place the power of visitation in the founder and his heirs, unless he settle it upon others:  that although corporations for public government be subject to the courts of Westminster Hall, which have no particular or special visitors, yet corporations for charity, founded and endowed by private persons, are subject to the rule and government of those that erect them; but where the persons to whom the charity is given are not incorporated, there is no such visitatorial power, because the interest of the revenue is not invested in them; but where they are, the right of visitation ariseth from the foundation, and the founder may convey it to whom and in what manner he pleases; and the visitor acts as founder, and by the same authority which he had, and consequently is no more accountable than he had been:  that the king by his charter can make a society to be incorporated so as to have the rights belonging to persons, as to legal capacities:  that colleges, although founded by private persons, are yet incorporated by the king’s charter; but although the kings by their charter made the colleges to be such in law, that is, to be legal corporations, yet they left to the particular founders authority to appoint what statutes they thought fit for the regulation of them.  And not only the statutes, but the appointment of visitors, was left to them, and the manner of government, and the several conditions on which any persons were to be made or continue partakers of their bounty."[19]

These opinions received the sanction of the House of Lords, and they seem to be settled and undoubted law.  Where there is a charter, vesting proper powers in trustees, or governors, they are visitors; and there is no control in any body else; except only that the courts of equity or of law will interfere so far as to preserve the revenues and prevent the perversion of the funds, and to keep the visitors within their prescribed bounds.  “If there be a charter with proper powers, the charity must be regulated in the manner prescribed by the charter.  There is no ground for the controlling interposition of the courts of chancery.  The interposition of the courts, therefore, in those instances in which the charities were founded on charters or by act of Parliament, and a visitor or governor and trustees appointed, must be referred to the general jurisdiction of the courts in all cases in which a trust conferred appears to have been abused, and not to an original right to direct the management of the charity, or the conduct of the governors or trustees."[20] “The original