Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 2.djvu/177

 170 FBDEBAL REPORTER. �or its value, which has been transferred by the bankrupt in fraud of the provisions of the bankrupt aet, is purely a stat- utory one, By section 5128 of the Eevised Statutes of the United States, as amended in 187e, in its application to in- voluntary bankruptcy, it is provided that the transfer shall be void, and the assignee may recover the property or its pro- ceeds, when the person who has been declared a bankrupt being insolvent, or in contemplation of insolvency, within two months before the filing of the petition against him, with a view to give a preference to any crediter, makes any transfer of any part of his property to a person who received the transfer having reasonable cause to believe such debtor to be insolvent, etc. It is as indispensable to the right of the assignee to recover that the transfer be one made within the two months, as that it be one made by a person who was insolvent or in contemplation of insolvency. He has no cause of action unless he brings himself within the conditions precedent to its existence. �It is not within the province of a court of law or equity to enlarge or change a statutory cause of action; the court can only interprot and enforce; and I should deem the question presented so plain as not to require f urther comment, were it not that Judge Dillon, in the Exchange National Bank of Co- lumhus y.Harris, 14 N. B. E. 510, has decided the same ques- tion adversely to the views which I entertam. In that case the leamed judge justly remarks that it shocks the moral sense to permit a fraudulent purchaser purposely to coneeal his fraud from the world, and then insist that it is too late to pursue him; and he is of opinion that the cases in which courts of equity have refused to apply the bar of the statute of limitations, when the fraud has been perpetrated and con- cealed by the party who seeks to avail himself of the lapse of time, are analogous and controlling, and his conclusion is that a crediter who has received a preference, and concealed it, cannot insist that it was not received within the statutory time. �The reasons thus given and the conclusion reached would be more aatisfactoxy if the act of a creditor in obtaining a ����