by John Marshall Harlan

“ While the property is peculiar, and in its nature a personal privilege, yet such value as it may possess, notwithstanding the restrictions to which it is subject, is susceptible of being realized by creditors. ”

“ By making the sale the assignees would have assumed no special obligation for the balance of the debts having a lien upon these memberships. They should have sold at once, or waited to see if there was a rise in value. They chose the latter. They never, in terms, relinquished their claim upon the property. The ad interim payments made by the bankrupt only kept alive certain insurance, which on his death would have inured to the heirs, and not gone to the assignees. Such payments, therefore, were wholly for his benefit, and not for the assigned estate, or for the creditors. ”

“ We hold that the assignees, after sedulously avoiding for years any responsibility in the premises, the assumption of any relations to the exchanges, the taking of any steps to free the rights from incumbrance, or to realize upon them as incumbered, and allowing the bankrupt, by the use of after-acquisitions, to create a value not theretofore possessed, cannot be allowed to come into a court of equity, and, in spite of laches and acquiescence of the most pronounced character, invoke its aid to wrest from him the fruit of his independent and lawful exertions, and reap where they had not sown. ”