Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/880

Rh 848 M O R M R 1872, at New York, where his statue in bronze now stands in the Central Park. His instrument and alphabet are now used on 95 per cent, of the telegraph wires of the world. (s. i. p.) MORSHANSK, a district town of Russia, situated in the government of Tamboff, 58 miles (187 miles by rail) to the north of the capital of the province on the Tsna river, a tributary of the Oka, and on the railway between Moscow and Orenburg. The village Morsha was founded only in the middle of the 17th century, and received municipal institutions in 1779 ; but a hundred years ago it was already a wealthy town, owing to its situation in a most fertile district. Since it was brought into railway communication with Riazhsk (on the railway between Moscow and Riazan) it has acquired still more importance, and has become the chief centre for trade in wheat raised in the governments of Tamboff, Penza, Saratoff, and in the eastern districts of the government of Riazan. Merchants from Moscow, Yaroslav, Vladimir, St Petersburg, and the Baltic ports come to Morshansk to make large purchases of grain, flour, hemp-seed, tallow, and potash. These are sent, either to the Shilovskaya loading-place, or by rail to Moscow. There are in Morshansk several steam flour- mills, distilleries, and large store-houses for grain ; the town, though built of wood, is cleaner than most of the towns of the black-earth region. Morshansk has also some importance for the import of manufactured ware brought from the north and sent thence to the villages of the neigh bouring districts. Population, 20,000. MORTALITY TABLES. See INSURANCE, vol. xiii. p. 169 sq. MORTGAGE. The general object of mortgage is to secure a money debt by making it a charge on land, so that, if the debt be not paid by a time agreed upon between the parties, the creditor may sell the land and pay himself out of the proceeds. In English law this is done by a conveyance of the land in absolute terms to the creditor, subject only to its being defeated if the debt should be paid at the time fixed an arrangement to which the law has attached peculiar incidents designed to carry out its real object. An absolute conveyance, however, is by no means essential to the purposes of mortgage. The history of mortgage transactions in Roman law shows three well-marked stages. In the beginning the estate was conveyed absolutely to the creditor, who made a covenant (fiducici) to reconvey it when the debt should be paid. All the interest, however, in the meantime passed from the debtor to the creditor, and should the latter refuse to reconvey there was no remedy to the original owner except a personal action. In the second stage (that of pignus) the property did not pass to the creditor ; he merely received possession of the thing pledged, together with certain rights of sale, &c., in the event of payment not being made at the time appointed. Lastly, without part ing with the possession even of the pledge the debtor could create a lien or charge (hypotheca] over it in favour of the creditor, who acquired thereby a right on failure of payment to follow the thing by real action against the possessor, whosoever he might be, and to repay himself from the proceeds of his sale. The mortgage of English law is the result of two dis tinct influences. Its origin and form belong to the common law ; the restrictions by which it is made to serve the purpose of a security only, and nothing more, belong to the courts of equity. In the eye of the common law the mortgagee was the owner of the estate conveyed in the mortgage ; in equity the mortgager remains the real owner, and the mortgagee is merely an encumbrancer. A, the owner of land in freehold, conveys to B and his heirs, with a proviso that on repayment of money lent by B to A, on a future day, with interest until payment, B or his heirs will reconvey the estate to A and his heirs, and that, until default be made in payment, A and his heirs may hold without interruption from B and his heirs. This is a common mortgage of land, and at law, after failure of payment, the land belonged absolutely to the mortgagee, while in the meantime, before payment, the legal estate was considered to be vested in him, subject only to being defeated by payment at the proper time. The Court of Chancery first interfered in the reign of James I. to decree a redemption after forfeiture, and a case in the reign of Charles I. decides that payment after forfeiture has the same effect as payment before. The right of the mort gager to redeem his estate after it has been forfeited, according to the terms of the deed, is called his equity of redemption. No agreement between the parties was suffered to oust the jurisdiction of the court, or to deprive the debtor of his equity of redemption. And this equity, at first regarded as a mere right of the debtor, became established in course of time as an estate in land which descended to the heirs of the mortgager. On the other hand, the interest of the mortgagee is part of his personal estate, and passes to his executor and not to his heir. In spite of the terms of the mortgage, the owner of the land is still the owner, and the mortgagee is a creditor for the money he advanced and the interest thereon. It may be a question whether a given deed is a conveyance or a mortgage, and the court, in deciding, will look at all the circumstances of the case, and will treat it as a mortgage when it was the real intention of the parties that it should operate as a security only. Thus, if the price was grossly inadequate, if the purchaser was not let into immediate pos session, if he accounted for the rents to the grantor, retaining an amount equivalent to interest, if the expense of the deed was borne by the grantor, there would be reason to believe that the conveyance was only meant to be a mort gage. And &quot; once a mortgage, always a mortgage ; &quot; no subsequent agreements can change its character. A mortgagee may, however, on default of payment file a bill of foreclosure requiring the mortgager to pay the amount of the debt with interests or costs by an appointed day, or submit to be deprived of his equity of redemption. The effect of failure to pay by the time appointed would be to make the mortgagee absolute owner of the estate ; but the court in any foreclosure suit may, at the request of either side, order a sale instead of a foreclosure. And a power of sale is now implied as one of the incidents of the mortgage, unless forbidden or varied by express des tination. The mortgagee is entitled to retain out of the proceeds of the sale the amount of his principal, interest, and costs, the surplus belonging to the mortgager. A mortgager cannot require the creditor to receive payment before the time appointed in the deed ; and, on default of payment at the appointed time, he must give the creditor six months notice of his intention to pay off the mortgage, so that the creditor may have time &quot; to look out for a fresh security for his money.&quot; When the same land is successively mortgaged to different persons, their rights take priority according to their chrono logical order. But the operation of equitable doctrines in the formation of the law of mortgage leads to an im portant modification of this rule. Of the successive mort gagees, the first only takes the legal estate, and this, according to the maxim of the Court of Chancery, will turn the scale when there is an equality of equitable rights between two contracting parties. Thus, if the third mort gagee had no notice at the time of making his advance of the existence of the second mortgagee, the equities of the two claimants are supposed to be equal, and if nothing else intervened priority of time would decide the order of