THE

WESLEYAN VINDICATOR

AND

CONSTITUTIONAL METHODIST.

EDITED BY THE REV. SAMUEL JACKSON,

AND A SUB-COMMITTEE.

JUNE, 1851.

HOLT CHAPEL CASE.

THE VICE-CHANCELLOR'S JUDGMENT NO TRIUMPH FOR METHODIST

REVOLUTIONISTS.

SOME of the professed friends of Methodism are found triumphing at this time on the ground of the Vice-Chancellor's Judgment on the Holt chapel case; and they would fain have it believed, that his judgment gives legal support and security to the revolutionary measures which some months ago were advocated by Mr. Cozens Hardy and his partisans. They have inserted lengthened articles in their newspaper to proclaim their triumph; and have printed on placards, in the largest type they could employ, Holt chapel case: the Conference party defeated. Now, to say nothing of the danger there is to such parties in shouting before they have really got out of the wood, (for there may yet be an opposite decision on an appeal,) we see no sufficient reason for the noise they make.

In the first place, let it be observed, both by them and by the true friends of Methodism, that the manifest object of Mr. Hardy was to wrest from the Wesleyans the new as well as the old chapel at Holt for the use of himself and his party. This object has been most successfully defeated; for that chapel is not, and will not be, in their possession. The end principally sought by the Connexion was to preserve for the Wesleyans at Holt the chapel which they had built, and in which they were accustomed to assemble for divine worship; and that end is secured. It never was a question among those who made the appeal to the Vice-Chancellor, whether Mr. Hardy should have his mortgage-money or not. On the other hand, the money due to him,

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in that form, was offered him on the reasonable condition, that he, who was also Treasurer to the Trustees, should make a return of the pecuniary state of the trust, as far as respected his relation to it as Treasurer; and when this reasonable proposal was refused, the amount supposed to be due to him was paid into court, as a proof of the willingness that existed to pay what was justly due to him. addition to this refusal to render an account of the pecuniary state of the trust, there was what was condemned by the Vice-Chancellor, and what we suppose was the reason in his mind for not making any order concerning the costs. "There was," as he said, "something like an attempt to mislead the plaintiffs in the representations made to them at the latter part of last year relative to the transfer to Hill: at all events, something like mystery in a transaction where nothing ought to have been concealed or misrepresented." The attempt to mislead, the concealment, and misrepresentation, here so severely censured by his Lordship, were in the transfer of the mortgage made by Mr. Hardy to another party, and in the refusal, when applied to for the purpose of paying off the amount due, to say who that party was; so that, if the mortgage-money had been paid, as demanded, it would have been paid to a nameless person, and with the liability that it might have to be paid again. Under these circumstances it was that the interlocutory proceedings against Mr. Hardy and his party were commenced in the Court of Chancery; not with a view of depriving the mortgagee of the money due to him, as has been represented, but to ascertain who really was the mortgagee, so that the money might be paid with safety; and to secure for the use of the true Methodists at Holt the chapel they had built. And so far, undoubtedly, the ends have been secured. The legal mortgagee is known; the money, when paid, cannot be claimed by any other party; and the chapel will be secured to Wesleyan Methodism.

But it may appear to some that, by the Vice-Chancellor's judgment, other questions which vitally affect the Methodist Connexion have been decided; such as the opportunity there is now afforded to “evilworkers" to carry out into successful operation the plan published by Mr. Hardy for a collusive transfer of chapel property, and the illegality of removals from membership in the Society by a DistrictCommittee, and especially if that member should be, as in Mr. Hardy's case, a Trustee. It is not so. His Lordship's judgment has not decided either of those questions. As to the first of them, the ViceChancellor's judgment, if fairly interpreted, shows plainly that Mr. Hardy's plan, if attempted to be carried out for the purpose of diverting the property from the original object of the trust, would be positively condemned in the Court of Chancery; for it was on the ground that no direct fraudulent transaction was proved against Mr. Hardy, that the judgment was given in his favour. Had it been proved that, as an example and illustration of his own plan for collusion, the Trustees at Holt had made him mortgagee, so that he might seize the

chapel and assign it to a hostile party, there is no doubt what that judgment would have been. But this was not Mr. Hardy's case. He became mortgagee several years ago, by the death of his uncle, before his published plan of collusion was thought of; and, therefore, it was evident that he was not made mortgagee for the diversion of the trust, as he, a Magistrate in Norfolk, has lately recommended; and though, as the Vice-Chancellor said, there was concealment and misrepresentation, in connexion with the transfer of the mortgage to Hill, yet his case was not, in its very commencement, in accordance with his dishonourable plan for corrupting Trustees, and therefore is not to be confounded with it. There is nothing in his Lordship's judgment which at all ought to shake the confidence of the Connexion in the legal opinion given by Mr. Matthews, Barrister-at-law, and which was published in the "Watchman" newspaper of March 6th, 1850; namely, that "The Model Deed, as it is usually called, contains a power allowing Trustees to mortgage, 'for securing such sum and sums of money as may be requisite or necessary, in and for the due accomplishment of the trusts and purposes of the deed.' It must be a strange, unwarranted, and dangerous ingenuity, that would attempt to use such a power to defeat those trusts and purposes. Nor can there be the least doubt but that such an attempt, however subtilly devised and craftily executed, would be a fraud that the Court of Chancery would promptly redress. It is a well-established and universal principle of law, that fraud vitiates everything; and supposing there to be a fraudulent collusion between Trustees and a Mortgagee, for the purpose of defeating the trusts and diverting the property from its settled purpose, such deed would be set aside at the costs of the party promoting it every attempt to coerce the Ministers into compliance with such a fraudulent demand, would be unlawful." And they would indeed be bold and reckless Trustees, who should, on the ground of the Vice-Chancellor's judgment in this case, combine to hand over any properly-settled chapel to a hostile party, by effecting a mortgage upon it. They would, without doubt, find themselves under more painful and expensive censure than that which, in this case, pronounces upon concealment and misrepresentation.

As to the unworthy conduct of Mr. Hardy and his co-Trustees, who have sympathised and united with him in his late revolutionary proceedings, his Lordship has already pronounced condemnation upon them, and has admitted that they are unfit for their office as Trustees; and in his judgment there was unmistakable intimation given, that if the case should go on to a hearing, they would be removed from their office. The following are among the words he spoke concerning them :-" As to all these defendants, it was agreed that their conduct in encouraging and assisting the scheme for putting the chapel into the hands of mortgagees, and so defeating the objects of the Deed of which they are Trustees, is of itself sufficient to show their unfitness for the discharge of duties which it has been their object to thwart."

There is no mistaking this decisive language; and there can be no doubt what would be done with the Trustees, in a further stage of legal proceedings in the Court of Chancery, if the case should go on to the hearing of which his Lordship afterwards spoke. Here, then, again, is no great cause for triumph on the part of Mr. Hardy and his abettors; for they are shown to be unfit for the office they hold; and may, if legal proceedings be carried on, be removed: and this would be the attainment of another important object sought by the plaintiffs in this

case.

And as to the passing opinion expressed by Lord Cranworth on the reason which appeared to Mr. Hardy and another for questioning the legality of their expulsion from the Methodist Society, that, with us, has no weight whatever, and does not in the least weaken our confidence in the authority of a District-Meeting to interfere in the case of expressed grievance, and redress it, if judged necessary, by the expulsion of any member who, on due inquiry, shall be found wantonly breaking the laws of the Wesleyan Connexion. Mr. Hardy and his revolutionary party have striven hard to drag into this suit old questions that had been formally decided, both by the Conference and the Court of Chancery, as will be seen by the affidavits they made. It is evident to every one who knows anything of what transpired in former years, that the very questions raised and settled in connexion with the Southwark disaffection, and Dr. Warren's expulsion, are here introduced again, and the same alleged reasons, in the very words, are found accompanying them. This is not at all surprising, when it is known, that the same parties are the prime movers in this case, as were among the most busy and active in the others; and that it is a London Corresponding Committee, and their legal adviser, who move the strings which regulate the loosely-hung-together body of professed Reformers in the country. But these questions were summarily dismissed by the Vice-Chancellor, as not properly belonging to the case upon which he had to give judgment; and, though in that judgment he referred to the validity of the expulsion of Hardy and Colman, as disputed by them, yet, it must be remembered, that it was on their ex parte statement that he did so, and not upon the hearing of the whole case of their expulsion. In their affidavit they make reference to the trials of members and Trustees in local courts, and the rules which are to regulate them; but they have carefully concealed, and grossly misrepresented, the laws of Wesleyan Methodism respecting the authority of District-Committees and of the Conference, in special cases, as courts of revision; and upon such garbled and false representations, we do not wonder at the passing opinion expressed by his Lordship.* But let this case of

*Let the very first sentence in the affidavit be viewed as an example of its general contents. In it Mr. Gidley Howden affirms, on oath, that, for about forty years, he has been a member and officer of the Wesleyan Connexion. Mr. Gidley Howden has not been a member of the Wesleyan-Methodist Society for several years past,

interference by a District-Meeting, when it shall arise, be fully argued, and we have no fear of the results. In fact, it has already been decided in the Court of Chancery. Vice-Chancellor Shadwell, and Lord Lyndhurst, then Lord Chancellor, both gave judgment in favour of the right of a District-Committee to interfere in any critical case which might occur, and to determine accordingly; and it was on the general ground of the right to interfere in any critical case, and to redress all grievances, that the decision of the District-Committee at Manchester, in the case of Dr. Warren, was sustained. We know of nothing more substantially fixed in the laws and regulations of Methodism, than the right and authority of a Special District-Committee to interfere in critical cases, and to redress grievances complained of, until the Conference. We showed this, at length, in the "Letter to Young Men on District-Meetings," which we inserted in our last Number; and we are confident of the favourable result to Methodism, in any fully-argued appeal that may be made respecting it, either in a court of equity or law.

Where, then, we ask, is the sufficient ground for the loud and boastful triumph of Mr. Hardy and his party in the judgment recently given by the Vice-Chancellor? The only point, which his decision rules at present, is, that a mortgagee who is also Treasurer to the Trustees of a chapel may enforce his claim, without first rendering an account of his position, financially, with respect to the moneys he has received or paid on behalf of the Trustees. In this, if it should remain where it is, there is nothing which will materially affect the trusts of chapels, throughout the Connexion. Yea, in one respect, it will be serviceable to it: for, if made permanent as a decision, it gives the fullest assurance of security to the mortgagees of chapel property; but, in another view, it is most important,-it shows the necessity there is of reducing and removing, as soon as practicable, the debts on Wesleyan chapels. We hope that our friends in the several Circuits, that Ministers and lay-gentlemen in the District-Meetings, and that the Conference, will all profit from this judgment of the ViceChancellor, and be careful not to recommend, or sanction, the erection of any chapel that will be encumbered with debt; and, should this be the result, the suit in Chancery, into which the Connexion has been forced by the concealment and misrepresentation we have referred to, will be overruled to an inestimable advantage to our beloved Methodism.

as may be learned by inquiries in the Circuit in which he resides. He was the paid Secretary to the London Corresponding Committee last year; but this did not make him a member of the Wesleyan Society.