Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 1.djvu/387

 of the agreement in question, the consequence was, not that specific performance should be refused, but that specific performance pure and simple should be granted, i. e., specific performance without any relation back. Such, it seems, should have been the decision; for as the statute prohibited any transfer of ownership in a British vessel, whether at law or in equity, except in the mode prescribed, it followed that the contract in question could not create any equitable ownership in the vessel (McCalmont v. Rankin, 2 De G., M. & G. 403; Coombes v. Mansfield, 3 Dr. 193; Liverpool Borough Bank v. Turner, 1 J. & H. 159, 2 De G., F. & J. 502); but if, as the court assumed, the contract created a legal right, it was no more a violation of the statute to enforce that right in equity by giving specific reparation than to enforce it at law by giving damages.Upon the whole, it seems that the court, in dismissing the bill, did proceed upon the idea that an agreement to convey is in equity an actual conveyance; that the consequence of enforcing the agreement in question would be to make it an actual conveyance in equity from its date, and that, too, not by relation, but independently of relation; that the operation of a contract as a conveyance in equity was not a consequence of specific performance, but that the latter was a consequence of the former; that the question, therefore, which the court had to decide was not whether equitable relief should be given for the violation of a legal right, but whether the agreement could, without a violation of the statute, create an equitable right in the plaintiff, and impose an equitable obligation upon the defendant, i. e., create between the plaintiff and the defendant the relation of trustee and cestui que trust.It would seem to be a sufficient answer to such a view to say that, if it be well founded, a vendee of land has no occasion to file a bill for specific performance, promptly or otherwise; that he may always base his right to go into equity upon his character of cestui que trust; that, instead of filing a bill for specific performance, he may, e.g., file a bill for an account. Indeed, a bill for an account would possess at least one signal advantage over a bill for specific performance, namely, that it would require no performance by the plaintiff, i. e., that the plaintiff’s right to an account would not be at all affected by the fact that he had not paid the purchase-money. but make no disposition of either the land or its proceeds, though the land will at law descend to the testator’s heir, yet the executor will in equity be entitled to have it sold, and, when sold, the purchase-money will in equity be part of the personal estate. And even though the testator, in the case supposed, devise “all his land” to A, yet A will take no more than a naked legal title to the piece of land directed to be sold. Nor is a will the only means by which an owner of property can effect an equitable conversion of it. He can also convert his land into money by a contract to sell the former, and he can convert his money into land by a contract to buy land; and if he died intestate after making such a contract, though before performance of it, his heir may, in the one case, be compelled by the executor to convey the land, though the purchase-money will go to the executor, while, in the other case, the executor may be compelled by the heir to pay for the land, though the land will be conveyed to the heir. Moreover, this equitable conversion undoubtedly takes place the moment the