Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 1.djvu/780

 772 FEDERAL REPORTER. �appointed, the costs incurred in the litigation that had to be gone through with to attain that end usually consuaied the estate. �To put an end to such fraudulent practices the act of 1859, sections 385, 387, Gantt's Digest, was passed. It was the design of that act to eut up by the roots the evils of the for- mer practice. The legislative intent to accomplish this pur- pose is not left to implication, but is expressed in plain and unmistakable language. The first section of the act declares that "in ail cases in which any person shall make an assign- ment of any property, whether real, personal, mixed, or choses in action, for the payment of debts, before the assignee thereof shall be entitled to take possession, sell, or in any way man- age or control any property so assigned, he shall be requir'ed to file in the office of the county clerk a full and complete inventory and description of the property, and execute a bond to the state in double the value of the property, with good securities, to be approved by the county judge." �Under this section three things are necessary to a complete and valid assignment — First, a deed of assignmeut ; second, an inventory of the property filed with the county clerk ; and, third, the execution of an approved bond by the assignee. AU these must be done "before" the assignee acquires the legal title to the property; they are conditions precedent, made so by the express language of the statute. �One who by law bas no right to the possession of personal property, and no right to sell or in any way manage or con- trol it, has no title to it. This language in the act, ex vi ter- mini, imports a want of title, and is legally equivalent to a declaration that, before the title to the property shall vest in the assignee, he shall file the inventory and give the bond required by the act. �The assignee is not required to prepare the inventory, but to "file it in the clerk's office;" he does not make it and can- not do so, because he is denied the possession of the prop- erty until the inventory is filed. It is the duty of the debtor making the assignment to prepare the inventory ; it is a ma- terial, and, under the statute of this state, an indispensable, ��� �