Melville Fuller

“ It is true that the mere taking of security for the obligations of the lease would not import that the lessor's privilege created by law in favor of these obligations was abrogated, yet when the necessary effect of the contract under consideration is to separate the duty to pay for the cane from the obligations of the lease as such, and to secure it separately, the stipulation as to security is entitled to great weight, as tending to show that the parties regarded the obligations of the lease as one thing, and the obligation to pay the price separately secured as another. ”

“ Jurisprudence adopts this view: for, if it grants a privilege to the lessor for the advance which he makes, it is because these advances concern the lease. The owner of an iron furnace stipulates to furnish to the lessee of his furnace the wood necessary to operate it; it has been adjudged that such an advance is privileged. Such is also the case when the lessor furnishes beets to the lessee of a sugar factory. The lessor furnishes 10,000 francs to the lessee of a mill, as a fund to be used in operating it. ”

“ The right of the parties, however, by the contract to create an equitable lien, and the power of a court of equity to enforce such lien, are denied upon the ground that as, by the provisions of the law of Louisiana, equality of distribution is the rule among creditors, and preferences can only result from privileges and mortgages, and as the subject-matter from which the lien here arose was not one of the cases to which the law of Louisiana gives a privilege, therefore an equitable lien could not be created by contract or enforced in violation of the terms of the statutes of Louisiana. ”