and that the defendant wrongfully detains it from him, the judgment is followed up by a writ issued to the sheriff under which the latter dispossesses the defendant, and puts the plaintiff in possession. This is an instance, therefore, in which a judgment is enforced through the physical power of the sheriff alone. If, however, the property be movable, and the defendant remove or conceal it so that the sheriff cannot find it, the court is powerless. So, under a judgment for the recovery of money, the court is powerless, if the defendant (not being subject to arrest) have no property which is capable of seizure, or none which the sheriff can find; and it matters not how much property incapable of seizure he may have. Even when the defendant is subject to arrest, his arrest and imprisonment are not regarded by the law as a means of compelling him to pay the judgment; but his body is taken (as his property is) in satisfaction of the judgment.
Nor is our common law peculiar in its method of protecting rights; for the same method substantially is and always has been employed in most other systems of law with which we are acquainted. Nemo potest præcise cogi ad factum was a maxim of the Roman law, and it has been adhered to in those countries whose systems of law are founded upon the Roman law.
Equity, however, has always employed, almost exclusively, the very method of compulsion and coercion which the common law, like most other legal systems, has wholly rejected; for when a person is complained of to a court of equity, the court first ascertains and decides what, if anything, the person complained of ought to do or refrain from doing; then, by its order or decree, it commands him to do or refrain from doing what it has decided he ought to do or refrain from doing; and finally, if he refuses or neglects to obey the order or decree, it punishes him by imprisonment for his disobedience. Even when common law and equity give the same relief, each adopts its own method of giving it. Thus, if a court of equity decides that the defendant in a suit ought to pay money or deliver property to the plaintiff, it does not render a judgment that the plaintiff recover the money or the property, and then issue a writ to its executive officer commanding him to enforce the judgment; but it commands the defendant personally to pay the money or to deliver possession of the property, and punishes him by imprisonment if he refuse or neglect to do it.
