MORTGAGES.

It has already appeared by a reference to our primitive legislation, that the efforts of the legislature to establish a system for recording conveyances of land prior to 1715, were productive only of temporary acts, soon repealed. In some of these acts mortgages are particularly mentioned, but for the most part they were embraced by the general term of conveyances of land.

The act of 1705, which is still in force, gave the remedy on a mortgage, but it was the act of 1715 which regulated their recording, as well as that of deeds. It was more successful in inducing mortgagees to record their mortgages than it was in relation to deeds: because it prescribed a time within which the former should be recorded in order to possess validity, which was omitted as to the latter. The eighth section declared that no deed or mortgage or defeasible deed in the nature of a mortgage should be good or sufficient to convey or pass any freehold or inheritance, or to grant any estate therein for life or years, unless such deed was acknowledged or proved, and recorded within six months after the date thereof. There is considerable ambiguity in the language of this section, but the courts have construed it to apply only to mortgages, and not to other deeds and conveyances of land.(1)

(1) Recent laws have changed the time for recording.

Second, by
During the

Mortgages were not only distinguished from those of England, at the settlement of the province, and since, by the necessity of recording, but also by the remedy for recovery of the moneys due thereon. In England the mortgagee had two remedies against the land, in case of default by the mortgagor to pay the money due. First, to recover possession of the land mortgaged, by ejectment or without. bill in chancery to compel a foreclosure. twenty-four years that elapsed from the charter in 1681 to the year 1705, the mortgagee had only the first of these remedies: for there was no court of equity in which a chancery proceeding could be had. If the mortgagor failed to pay, and was insolvent, the mortgagee had only the land to resort to for indemnity, and he might get possession of it and receive the rents and profits. Still, however, this was often an inadequate remedy, for the profits of real estate, at that time, were low, and the mortgagee was obliged to keep an account of the rents and profits, because the equity of redemption still remained in the mortgagor for a period of twenty years. The preamble of the act of 1705 recites that, as the law then stood, mortgages had become no effectual security. The act then authorizes the mortgagee, twelve months from the last day when the mortgagemoney should have been paid or conditions performed, to sue out a scire facias from the court of common pleas, directed to the proper officer, requiring him to make known to the mortgagor, his heirs, executors or administrators, to appear at court and show cause

why the lands should not be seized and taken in execution to which the defendant might plead, if he appeared; if he did not appear, damages were to be assessed if necessary, judgment entered and the lands sold by a writ of levari facias, or delivered to the plaintiff free from all equity of redemption, and from all incumbrances of the mortgagor.

This remedy experience has proved to be convenient and speedy. It is the one usually adopted by the mortgagee, where there is no other fund to pay his debt: but, at the same time, the remedy by ejectment remains, and is sometimes, though rarely, resorted to by the mortgagee. So the mortgagee may be let into possession and receive the rents and profits, subject to account as before mentioned.

The effect of our recording acts has been to abolish various doctrines on the subject of mortgage, which have been fruitful topics of litigation in England. Such as tacking another debt to the mortgage-a third mortgagee, without notice of a second mortgage, protecting himself by buying in a first mortgage or incumbrance or term of years-a parol mortgage, or agreement to give a mortgage which has sometimes been treated as a mortgage.

APPENDIX I.

COLONIZATION PREVIOUS TO PENN.

THE history of the seventy-two years which preceded William Penn's arrival here is not without interest to recommend it to Pennsylvanians. An accurate research would perhaps prove, that something of the best points of our character is due to those who in primitive times, planted themselves along the shores of the Delaware, and contributed to form that population which afterwards, more or less, infused itself into other portions of the province.

Hudson and his companions, have the merit of being the first Europeans who visited Delaware bay, and discovered the outlet to the ocean, of one of the large rivers of the North American coast, admirably adapted to commerce, and giving easy access to an extensive tract, possessing a genial climate and a fertile soil.

The memory of Mey, who next ascended the river and built fort Nassau, in the neighbourhood of Gloucester, is preserved by the denomination of one of our capes. De Vries was the first to settle a colony