Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/819

783 ACCELERATION PROVISIONS IN TIME PAPER 783 "It would hardly be different if the note recited that it was secured by a chattel mortgage upon certain live stock and contained an agreement that in case their value should depreciate and the holder should deem the security insufficient the maker would on demand execute and deliver to the holder a mortgage upon certain real estate for such amount as would satisfy the holder, and that otherwise the note should mature at once." 147 The installment notes are distinguished because there the accelera- tion is by the maker's failure to pay money, here to do something else.^^^ Negotiable instruments are intended as a substitute for .money, but here is a contract to deliver things, which is therefore considered to be a very different affair. Nevertheless, it is well to remember that negotiable instruments do sometimes contain promises to do something else besides pay money. For instance, the maker may agree to let the holder sell the collateral, or to authorize any attorney of a court of record to enter judgment against him, or to deliver certificates of stock in exchange for the instrument."^ In many jurisdictions he may agree to allow the legal title of a chattel to remain in the holder until payment of the instrument.^^" Some of these allowable prom- ises are enforceable only at maturity, but not all. It is just the same sort of act, for instance, to deliver stock in exchange for a note as to deliver more stock to secure it. If one can be done be- fore maturity, why not the other? The question in every case is not whether the act is technically "additional" to the payment of money, but whether it is substantially so. If its real purpose is to aid the holder to secure the payment of money and protect him from the risks of insolvency, if it steadies the value of the note, and makes it circulate more readily, then it should not be fatal to negotiability. The promise to furnish more collateral is, it seems to me, such an incidental promise. The holder does not receive this collateral to keep after the instnmaent is paid. He gets it so as to be more cer- tain that the instrument will be paid, to make assurance doubly sure. Both the old and the new collateral must be surrendered "^ Holliday Bank v. Hoffman, supra, 75. "« Ibid., 77. ^^ N. I. L., § 5. The well-known common-law cases have already been discussed. They will be found in i Ames, Cases on Bills and Notes, Chap. I, Sec. V. ^^0 See note 3, supra.