of Illinois, on bonds conditioned for its repayment, and secured by deeds of trust. One of said bonds, and one of said deeds, as a specimen of all, is made part of the record. This bond declares 'that it is made under, and is in all respects to be construed, by the laws of the State of Illinois, and is given for an actual loan of money [$3,000] made at Chicago, by Charles W. Kirtland [the plaintiff], to Edmund A. Cummings [the obligor] on the day of the date hereof' [July 17, 1869]. The deed of the same date is a conveyance in fee, by Cummings and his wife, of a lot of land in Chicago, to Norman C. Perkins, of said city, to be held by him in trust, as security for the payment of said loan, with power to sell and convey the same, and apply the proceeds in payment of the loan, in case of default on the part of said Cummings to perform the stipulations of said bond. It is quite obvious that Cummings has incurred a debt to Kirtland, and that Kirtland has a claim against Cummings. Cummings is the debtor, Kirtland the creditor. Has this debt a situs? If it has, where is it? In Illinois, or in Connecticut? The contract to loan was made in Illinois, there the creditor parted with his money, there is the property pledged for its repayment, there the debtor is domiciled, there the trustee.
"This seems to indicate Illinois as the situs of this debt. So far as it is a thing having a substantial existence, it is there, and not elsewhere. The Connecticut statute provides in terms, 'that money secured by mortgages upon real estate in this State shall be set in the list and taxed only in the town where said real estate is situated.' This manifestly recognizes the situs of the property pledged as security for a debt, as the situs of the debt. But a debt has no situs. Only a material thing can have a corpus, and only a corpus can have a situs, for it is the location of the corpus that constitutes a situs. A debt is neither visible, tangible, nor ponderable; it has no situs, no corpus. It is a misnomer to call it property. In legal phrase it is but a chose in action, a jus incorporate. It is an equitable title in the property of the debtor, and it adheres, as a title, in the property it represents. It does not follow the person of the owner in his domicile, though he may transfer it there.
"These views are fully sustained by the United States Supreme Court, in the case of Brown vs. Kennedy, 15 Wall., 591.[1]
- ↑ In this case, which covered a proceeding under the confiscation act of 1862, the United States Court rejected the theory that a credit has a legal situs where the owner resides, and held that a bond and mortgage form of credit could be confiscated by the United States where the mortgage debtor resided, though, in point of fact, the bond and mortgage were never in the State of Kansas where the proceedings in forfeiture took place, and were, in fact, in possession of the owner, in the rebel lines, in the State of Virginia. The court accordingly passed a decree, and ordered that the said bond, mortgage, and credit be condemned and declared forfeited to the United States. The decree also ordered
