contract is made; i. e., the conversion, when actually made, will relate back to the time when the contract was made, Why? Because the equitable conversion depends upon the intention of the owner of the property, as shown by his making the contract. But this, surely, has nothing to do with the relations between the vendor and the vendee, and consequently nothing to do with the question whether the ownership of the land has passed from the vendor to the vendee. It is a matter entirely between one of the contracting parties and his representatives, and in regard to which the other contracting party neither has any right, nor is subject to any duty. In a word, it is not the contract qua contract that effects the equitable conversion, but the contract as expressing the intention of one of the parties to it in reference to a matter within his exclusive control.
We now come to the subject of the jurisdiction of equity over legal duties which do not amount to obligations. Although any failure to perform a duty of this kind (as it is not a breach of obligation) is a tort, yet, as it consists merely in non-feasance, it is closely analogous, in respect to equity jurisdiction, to a breach of an affirmative contract or other affirmative obligation. For example, as equity cannot prevent the latter, so neither can it the former; and therefore specific reparation is the utmost relief that equity can give in respect to the former, as it is in respect to the latter. There are, however, important differences in respect to equity jurisdiction between affirmative contracts and legal duties, whether the latter amount to obligations or not. For example, all legal duties (or at least all that equity would ever attempt to enforce) are unilateral, and therefore the enforcement of them never involves any of those difficulties which are peculiar to bilateral contracts. On the other hand, legal duties generally consist only in doing, while affirmative contracts consist in giving as well; and, as the jurisdiction of equity over affirmative contracts is mostly confined to those which consist in giving, it follows that the exercise of this latter jurisdiction will seldom furnish a precedent for equity’s assuming jurisdiction over legal duties. Indeed, the difficulty which equity experiences in enforcing a specific reparation which consists in doing is precisely the same, whether the thing to be repaired be the breach of an affirmative contract or of a legal duty, or be a tort which consists in mis-feasance, assuming, of course, that the latter is one which is in its nature capable of
