8 Watts 443 | Pa. | 1839
The opinion of the Court was delivered by
The injustice, which existed at common law, of not permitting a set-off of mutual cross demands, unconnected with each other, so that, if of equal amount, both might thereby be satisfied and extinguished, or if of unequal amount, the less might be so and the larger pro tanto, was often sensibly fell: and especially in the first settlement of this state, as a province, when the scarcity of money not only tended greatly to increase the number of such demands, but rendered the payment of them, in any other way than that of set-off, frequently impracticable. It may be, therefore, that necessity as well as natural equity, produced the. passage of our defalcation act in 1705, some twenty years and more before any thing of the kind was introduced into England.. Their first statute
Judgment reversed, and a venire de novo awarded.