The first question is, whether this devise can be sustained, otherwise than as a charity, and by that special aid and assistance by which courts of equity support gifts to charitable uses.

If the devise be a good limitation at law, if it require no exercise of the favor which is bestowed on privileged testaments, then there is already an end to the question.  But I take it that this point is conceded.  The devise is void, according to the general rules of law, on account of the uncertainty in the description of those who are intended to receive its benefits.

“Poor white male orphan children” is so loose a description, that no one can bring himself within the terms of the bequest, so as to say that it was made in his favor.  No individual can acquire any right or interest; nobody, therefore, can come forward as a party, in a court of law, to claim participation in the gift.  The bequest must stand, if it stand at all, on the peculiar rules which equitable jurisprudence applies to charities.  This is clear.

I proceed, therefore, to submit, and most conscientiously to argue, a question, certainly one of the highest which this court has ever been called upon to consider, and one of the highest, and most important, in my opinion, ever likely to come before it.  That question is, whether, in the eye of equitable jurisprudence, this devise be a charity at all.  I deny that it is so.  I maintain, that neither by judicial decisions nor by correct reasoning on general principles can this devise or bequest be regarded as a charity.  This part of the argument is not affected by the particular judicial system of Pennsylvania, or the question of the power of her courts to uphold and administer charitable gifts.  The question which I now propose respects the inherent, essential, and manifest character of the devise itself.  In this respect, I wish to express myself clearly, and to be correctly and distinctly understood.  What I have said I shall stand by, and endeavor to maintain; namely, that in the view of a court of equity this devise is no charity at all.  It is no charity, because the plan of education proposed by Mr. Girard is derogatory to the Christian religion; tends to weaken men’s reverence for that religion, and their conviction of its authority and importance; and therefore, in its general character, tends to mischievous, and not to useful ends.

The proposed school is to be founded on plain and clear principles, and for plain and clear objects, of infidelity.  This cannot well be doubted; and a gift, or devise, for such objects, is not a charity, and as such entitled to the well-known favor with which charities are received and upheld by the courts of Christian countries.

In the next place, the object of this bequest is against the public policy of the State of Pennsylvania, in which State Christianity is declared to be the law of the land.  For that reason, therefore, as well as the other, the devise ought not to be allowed to take effect.