Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 3.djvu/441

 434 PEDBEAL EEPOETER- �acquired under it, and growing out of its execution in the past. �4. It is said that the contract requires the performance of continuons duties, and therefore specifie performance will not be decreed. This is true, but a court of equity may, nev- ertheless, enjoin the violation. Pomeroy on Specifie Perform- ance, §§ 24, 25, 310, 311, and 312. �6. I am not prepared at present to decide that the defend- ants may not be able to show that the contract in question ought to be cancelled by decree of this court ; that is a ques- tion which can only be determined upon final hearing. In cases of this character, when the contract requires continuons service for a series of years, and where the parties disagree, even if the contract is not absolutely void, a court of equity may decree a dissolution of relations between them, upon a free settlement of their accounts, and payment of any bal- ances. �What I Tvish to emphasize in this case, as well as in other similar cases, is that the defendants have no right to take their remedy into their own hands. If they have the right to seize this property by force, upon the ground that they hold the contract void, according to the same reasoning the plaintiff would have the right to adjudge the contract valid, and by force retake the property. In other words, force and violence would take the place of law, and mobs would be sub- stituted for the process of courts of justice. The strongest litigant, the one commanding the largest force of men and the most money, would succeed. �Such a doctrine, if recognized by the courts as a proper mode of adjusting disputes concerning property rights, would lead at once to anarchy. �If the defendants, after years of acquiescence in the con- tract in question, after receiving its benefits, and after a property had been built up under it to which others made claim, became suddenly convinced that it was a void contract, it was their duty to apply to the courts for relief, praying a cancellation of the contract, and a fuU and fair settlement of ail accounts growing out of its execution in the past. ����