400
LAW REFORM.
is any comfort to him ; he may apply for a decree against me to perform my agreement ; but till then his claims are not recognised in a Court of Common Law. If an injunction be brought, the expenses are further multiplied. Why, I ask, should not the agreement, such as I have described, be as good as a lease ; when, in substance, it is the very same thing, and only wants a word added or left out to make it the same in legal effect too ? A case illustrative of this subject happened to come within my own observation. I was counsel in a case at York, where an agreement had been entered into and possession given ; but because it did not contain words of present demise, it was no lease, and therefore the tenant could not stand a moment against the ejectment that was brought, but was driven into the Court of Chancery, where the other party could just as little stand against him. How much inconvenience, expense, and delay, then, might be saved, if such an agreement were pronounced equivalent to a lease ; and, in general, every thing were supposed done in one Court which may be ordered as a matter of course to be done by another,—reserving, no doubt, all objections on the head of fraud, mistake, surprise, and the like, which may be raised by pleading at law, just as easily as in equity. In like manner, I would allow a Legatee to sue an Executor or Administrator for his legacy,* and the Mortgager to sue for his rights. It is always said that in these and the like cases of active trusts, accounts must be taken ; and so they must in every The Local Courts Bill, brought in according to the recommendation of the Common Law Commissioners appointed in consequence of this motion, provided for these defects, but it was thrown out by a bare majority in the Lords, 1833.