Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 10.djvu/116

90 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. therefore, when equity Is applied to by an annuitant, it is seldom on the mere ground that the annuity constitutes a rent. In this country, the purchase and sale of annuities is never likely to be the subject of special bargains between private persons; but the grant- ing of annuities is likely to be confined to companies organized for that purpose (among others), and such companies publish the terms on which they will grant annuities, and these terms are uni- form, and hence the granting of an annuity will never be the sub- ject of a special bargain ; and every annuity will be granted on the personal credit alone of the company granting it. In short, an annuity is never likely in this country to take the form of a rent. Indeed, the practice of granting rents is believed never to have existed, to any appreciable extent, in this country; and it is not likely to exist in the future. Returning now to the general question of the jurisdiction of equity over rents, it may be said with confidence that the owner of a rent of any kind is entitled to have the same paid, if the in- come of the land out of which it issues is sufficient to pay it, and that it does not lie in the mouth of the tenant of the land to say that the income is insufficient. It may be asked, therefore, why every owner of a rent is not entitled to invoke the aid of equity as of course upon showing that his rent is in arrear; and it may be answered, first, that the law of England has shown a full appre- ciation of the claims of rent-owners by providing them with an extraordinary and exclusive remedy, — one, too, which they can themselves enforce without the aid of any court, — and by pro- tecting that remedy carefully as well against the frauds of tenants as against the competing claims of other creditors, — namely, that of distress; and that it is the clear policy of that law to require rent-owners to exhaust the remedy thus provided before seeking a more specific one against the income of the land ; and that, while the law of such of our States as still retain the remedy of distress is much less pronounced in its favor than the law of England, yet it would be clearly against the policy of the law in all such States for equity to interfere in favor of rent-owners before the remedy by distress has been exhausted. Secondly, that in most of our States, as has been seen, land- lords can terminate, in a summary manner, their relations with tenants who fail to pay their rents, and that a rent-owner who has that power cannot invoke the aid of equity, since the law gives him all that equity can give him, and even more. Where, however,