Equity of redemption

“ But if the condemnation of an equity of redemption is sanctioned by the act, the sale of that equity under a fieri facias is equally sanctioned. The one is a necessary consequence of the other. An execution is as natural to a decree in equity as to a judgment at law. ”

“ A trust estate was liable to execution and attachment long before. Why should not an equity of redemption be equally liable? The act expressly makes credits, liable to attachment, which was as contrary to the course of the common law as to subject equitable interests in land to condemnation.
Lord Mansfield, in a case in Douglass's reports (Doug. 610,) says, it is an affront to common sense to say that the mortgagor is not the real owner. The equity of redemption is the substantial ownership in the view of all the world. ”

“ It would, indeed, be astonishing, were it otherwise, for the contrary rule would hold out no relief to the borrower; it would be only transferring his money from the pocket of the lender to the pocket of the holder of the equity of redemption. ”

“ We have no power to foreclofe the equity of redemption, or to impofe terms upon a mortgagor applying to redeem. The Courts oƒ law in England have never done it, but under the act of Parliament of 7 G. 2 c. 20, made for the more eafy redemption and foreclofure of mortgages. ”

“ We have already seen that the filing of a bill by an execution creditor to subject the equity of the debtor in his life-time, created a lien and gave him a legal preference. And in the English chancery, although equities of redemption after the death of the mortgagor are classed as equitable assets, the rule of distribution, pari passu, is modified in its application to them in respect to judgment creditors by permitting them to retain their priority over other claims, because, if such priority were not allowed, the judgment creditor might acquire it by redeeming the mortgage. ”

“ The right of redemption is thine - The law had established that the estates of a family should never be alienated. If, therefore, a man through poverty was obliged to sell his patrimony, the nearest relative had a right to purchase it before all others, and even to redeem it, if it had been sold to another. ”

“ It would seem to me a justice unknown to the common law, to apply all the effects of an insolvent corporation to the debt of the government, and strip individuals. In such a case, the rule that equality is equity, would seem a very appropriate one. An equal distribution of all the effects among all the creditors, would certainly not operate unjustly. ”

“ The qualities of mercy and practicality have made equity the instrument for nice adjustment and reconciliation between the public interest and private needs as well as between competing private claims. ”

“ I cannot see why any man should think I am bound in conscience to pay the extravagance of other men. If my creditors spend £500 in getting in my estate by a statute, which I offered to surrender without it, I’ll reckon that £500 paid them, let them take it among them, for equity is due to a bankrupt as well as to any man, and if the laws do not give it us, we must take it. ”

“ Much of the so-called philanthropy is not well balanced and is run by cranks. Cranks attach themselves to any social movement, as a shaggy gown will gather burrs. It is not all of philanthropy to classify degenerates, titter at ignorance, and to go a-peeping through the slums! We have not yet realized the fulness of redemption. ”

“ But the common law was not settled till the nineteenth century and we find the chancellors using consideration frequently to mean not equivalent but any reason for making the promise and thus making it synonymous with the civilian's causa. The so-called meritorious consideration, consideration of blood and of love and affection, and the cases of promises sustained by moral obligation of a debtor to secure his creditor, of a husband to settle property on his wife and of a parent to provide for a child, show the idea of causa at work in equity. ”

“ And then, if we turn to the word in the other clause, 'the redemption of the purchased possession,' that suggests the incompleteness with which God as yet owns us. For though the initial act of redeeming is complete, yet redemption is a process, and not an act. And we 'are having' it, as the Apostle says in another [Pg 45] place very emphatically, in continual and growing experience. The estate has been acquired, but has not yet been fully subdued. For there are tribes in the jungles and in the hills who still hold out against the reign of Him who has won it for Himself. ”

“ Do away with usury and there is a natural limitation to riches. The rich will find that he can not grow constantly richer; not because he is by statute deprived of any personal rights, but he is hindered by the natural law embedded in things by the Creator.
Do away with usury and the problem of poverty is solved. If we credit vital energy with the increase of wealth and give the laborer all he earns, he has a fair and equal chance, and equity requires no more. It is justice and opportunity, a fair chance, that the poor need, not pity and gifts of charity. ”

“ But by the new institute of the rights of men, the only persons who in equity ought to suffer are the only persons who are to be saved harmless: those are to answer the debt who neither were lenders nor borrowers, mortgagers nor mortgagees. ”

“ To them it belongs, and to them every farthing of its profits must go. The reformation of extravagances comes too late. All is gone. Nothing left for retrenchment or frugality to go on. The debts of England, however, being due from the whole nation to one half of it, being as much the debt of the creditor as debtor, if it could be referred to a court of equity, principles might be devised to adjust it peaceably. ”

“ This single reflection will shew that the doctrine of redemption is founded on a mere pecuniary idea corresponding to that of a debt which another person might pay; and as this pecuniary idea corresponds again with the system of second redemptions, obtained through the means of money given to the church for pardons, the probability is that the same persons fabricated both the one and the other of those theories; and that, in truth, there is no such thing as redemption; that it is fabulous; and that man stands in the same relative condition with his Maker he ever did stand, since man existed ”

“ The purchase is by blood, but the redemption here is by power. The purchased possession is to be redeemed by power.
Now as this is so the inheritance must be in a state of alienation from God; some power has hold of it who has no right to it. If this were not the case it would be impossible to speak of a redemption by power. It is just like the possession of some land in a frontier state. A person purchases a large tract of land. ”

“ But it must have been very difficult for a slave, who had sold himself because he was ruined, to accumulate sufficient for his own redemption; and it is perfectly clear that it would be utterly impossible for us to accomplish any such redemption for ourselves. Multitudes have p. 45endeavoured to do so. They have striven to gain a freedom by tears and toils, and fastings, and almsdeeds, proportioned to the sin committed. But the only effect has been that the chain has been riveted more firmly than ever on their soul. Instead of providing a ransom they have daily increased their debt. ”

“ The nearer we approach the end of the period of redemption, the greater becomes the material interest attaching the individual to his plot, and the greater, consequently, his opposition to the redivision of the land. ”

“ There is no security for the permanence of public effort, save in the clear conviction of its intrinsic rightfulness and conduciveness to the public good. The rest must be left to time and posterity. True, the debt is sometimes paid after the creditor is dead. But if reparation never comes to the living, unknown persons whose condition needs betterment receive it, and that is the proud and consoling thought of those who—unrequited—effected it. ”

“ Any reform that does not base itself upon such a proposition and whose outlook is not in this direction is no reform, and does not deserve the serious attention of any. There is scarcely an idea prevalent in the community of what true justice and equity consist. But it may be stated as follows: No person has any just claim to the ownership of anything which he did not produce or which he did not acquire by an equitable exchange of something which he did produce. ”

“ Who lets another man put his hand into his purse when he pleases? Who, that has the power to help himself, surrenders his goods or his money to the will of another? Has it not always been, and must it not always be, true, that, if your property be at the absolute disposal of others, your ruin is certain? And if this be, of necessity, the case amongst individuals and parts of the community, it must be the case with regard to the whole community. ”

“ We enjoy by inheritance, or by choice, the blessings of American citizenship; let us not be unmindful of the obligations which these blessings impose. Let us not become so occupied in the struggle for wealth or in the contest for honors as to repudiate the debt that we owe to those who have gone before us and to those who bear with us the responsibilities that rest upon the present generation. Society has claims upon us; our country makes demands upon our time, our thought and our purpose. ”

“ It appears to be, in a particular manner, the object of sumptuary laws, and of the equal division of wealth, to prevent the gratification of vanity, to check the ostentation of superior fortune, and, by this means, to weaken the desire of riches, and to preserve, in the breast of the citizen, that moderation and equity which ought to regulate his conduct. ”

“ otherwise they would have known that it is to the property of the citizen, and not to the demands of the creditor of the state, that the first and original faith of civil society is pledged. The claim of the citizen is prior in time, paramount in title, superior in equity. The fortunes of individuals, whether possessed by acquisition, or by descent, or in virtue of a participation in the goods of some community, were no part of the creditor's security, expressed or implied. They never so much as entered into his head, when he made his bargain. ”

“ Any form of money, the condition of whose existence depends on redeemability in one thing alone, can not be money in the full sense, [105] and whenever an urgent demand for real money springs up the other ceases altogether to be money.
The redemption of money should be reciprocal between the Government and the people and between and among all individuals in the community. ”

“ It is evidently clear that much depends on the machinery employed for the collection of the revenues and the spirit in which it works. Custom and principles of equity enjoin upon the king the paramount necessity of being an "upright intendant of finances” in the first place, the discharge of his duties as protector of the husbandmen from oppression by upstarts, the sole fountain of justice and the consequent moulder of the destinies of a nation. ”

“ Let no one accuse me of defending the justness of any change; but I repeat it, if we are given a choice between a change which will aid the debtor by reducing the size of his debt and a change which will aid the creditor by increasing the amount which he is to receive, either by increasing the number of his dollars or their size, the advantage must be given to the debtor, and no man during this debate, whatever may be his private wish or interest, will advocate the giving of the advantage to the creditor. ”

“ When a man is under obligation to another by reason of a debt, the only inequality between them is that which is opposed to justice, so that for restitution nothing further is required than that the equality of justice should be reinstated, and this can be done in respect of one debt without another. ”

“ Distributive justice does not treat parties as equals, but gives to each one according to his personal worth—to the more deserving the superior positions and high salaries, to the less deserving the inferior positions and lower salaries. Commutative justice, on the other hand, treats the parties as equal, and decrees that debts must be paid and injuries repaired, even though payment or reparation must be made by a good man to a bad man, and that the recompense must equal the difference created between the parties by the debt or the injury. ”

“ If this maxim be just, where each party is equally innocent, how much more so, where the loss has been produced by the act of the creditor? For, a nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society. It was the act of the lender, or of his nation, which annihilated the profits of the money lent ”

“ People speak of it as if it were the same as ransom, propitiation, or atonement, whereas there is surely a great distinction between them. There cannot be a doubt that the two are very closely connected: but redemption in Scripture means much more than atonement, and always, or at all events generally, includes the idea of deliverance, or recovery. The word itself means to purchase back or to recover by purchase; which clearly implies both the payment of the price and the recovery of the purchased possession. If a man were a prisoner in a foreign land, and a p. ”

“ But the common law has been enlarged and enriched under the principles and maxims of equity, which are constantly applied at the present day in this country, and even in England, for the relief of grantees, the protection of mortgagors, and the benefit of purchasers, by a wise adaptation of ancient forms to the more liberal spirit of modern times. ”

“ Further, restitution is repayment of something taken away. Now something may be taken away from a man not only in commutation, but also in distribution, as when, in distributing, one gives a man less than his due. Therefore restitution is not more an act of commutative than of distributive justice. ”