60 Pa. 400 | Pa. | 1869
The opinion of the court was delivered,
by
The Act of 11th January 1867, entitled “An Act to enable Manufacturing and Mining Corporations to borrow money,” consists of a single section, and provides, “That all iron and other manufacturing and mining corporations, incorporated under the laws of this Commonwealth, shall be and are hereby enabled to borrow moneys, and to secure the loans to be made to them by mortgage of their property, and to dispose of their bonds or certificates of loan, or pay interest thereon, at such rates as railroad and canal companies may now do.” The question presented is, whether this act intended to embrace a mortgage of chattels in the term property, or only such property as had been usually mortgaged before the time of its passage. It is said the act is an enabling act. This is so, but was its purpose to enable these companies to mortgage their personal property, or was it to enable them to dispose of their bonds or pay interest thereon, at such rates as railroad and canal companies can now do ? If the former purpose had been distinctly in the mind of the penman of the act, it is strange he did not say so in clear and apt language, considering it to be the introduction of a novelty into the laws of mortgage, unwarranted by any former policy of the state. It is true railroad companies have been authorized to do this, and other corporations in similar circumstances, whose personal interests have been of such a permanent and fixed character, or so incapable of removal, that no inconvenience would be felt in relaxing the general rule as to movables. But in this act the term property is so wholly unexplained by its context that it may or may not refer
Judgment affirmed.