§ Order of the Day for the Second Reading, read.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR,in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said, that according to the law of this country, up to a very recent period, a state of things might happen which he should best describe by an illustration. The owner of a landed estate worth £5,000 a-year, which was mortgaged to the extent of £50,000, had also personal property to the extent of £50,000; on his death he left the real estate to one son and the money to another. It was, of course, the intention of the testator to divide his property equally between the two sons. But up to the period to which he had referred it would have been in the power of the son to whom the real estate was devised to call upon the son who had the personal property to apply the latter to paying off the mortgage;—and in that way he would become the possessor, not merely of the estate, but of the £50,000 applied to paying off the mortgage. In 1854 an Act—the 17 & 18 Vict., c. 113—amended in 1867, was passed, which provided that unless there was specific direction by the testator to that effect, this right 1736 to have the real estate exonerated out of the personal property should not exist. Those Acts, however, extended to freehold property only; and as, in some recent instances, the same injustice had arisen in respect of leasehold property, the object of the present Bill was to extend the former Acts to leaseholds.
§ Motion agreed to; Bill read 2a accordingly, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House on Monday next.