the sovereign, who is the fountain from which all justice flows, and from whom, therefore, all courts derive their jurisdiction. The answer to the second question is that the object of equity, in assuming jurisdiction over legal rights, is to promote justice by supplying defects in the remedies which the courts of law afford. The answer to the third question is that the jurisdiction is co-extensive with its object; that is, equity assumes jurisdiction over legal rights so far, and so far only, as justice can be thereby promoted. But then the question arises, How does it happen that the protection afforded by courts of law to legal rights is insufficient and inadequate, and how is it that equity is able to supply their short-comings? The answer to these questions, so far as regards the largest and most important part of the jurisdiction exercised by equity over legal rights (namely, that exercised over common law rights), will be found chiefly in the different methods of protecting rights employed by courts of common law and courts of equity respectively, i. e., in the different methods of compulsion or coercion employed by them.
A court of common law never lays a command upon a litigant, nor seeks to secure obedience from him. It issues its commands to the sheriff (its executive officer); and it is through the physical power of the latter, coupled with the legal operation of his acts and the acts of the court, that rights are protected by the common law. Thus, when a common-law court renders a judgment in an action that the plaintiff recover of the defendant a certain sum of money as a compensation for a tort or for a breach of obligation, it follows up the judgment by issuing a writ to the sheriff, under which the latter seizes the defendant’s property, and either delivers it to the plaintiff at an appraised value in satisfaction of the judgment, or sells it, and pays the judgment out of the proceeds of the sale. Here, it will be seen, satisfaction of the judgment is obtained partly through the physical acts of the sheriff, and partly through the operation of law. By the former, the property is seized and delivered to the plaintiff, or seized and sold, and the proceeds paid to the plaintiff. By the latter, the defendant’s title to the property seized is transferred to the plaintiff, or his title to the property is transferred to the purchaser, and his title to its proceeds to the plaintiff. So if a judgment be rendered that the plaintiff recover certain property in the defendant’s possession, on the ground that the property belongs to the plaintiff,
