1836.] OOO [Rothrock. 



the judiciary is competent to hear and decide, it is expedient 

 that the courts should adjudicate them after a full hearing of all 

 parties, rather than that they should be determined by special 

 legislative acts upon an ex parte hearing." " The evils had been 

 that real estate was extensively bound by trusts that made 

 vacant ground and dilapidated buildings inalienable in title, 

 which kept it out of the market and unproductive and unim- 

 provable by the owners or purchasers, without a special act of 

 Assembly, and in some instances such act would not avail. The 

 courts for remedy were enabled to make decrees to sell, lease, 

 mortgage, and convey on ground-rent, or to enable the trustees 

 to build, and the reservation of rents and the purchase moneys 

 were substituted, with security, for the land sold on the limita- 

 tions of the original trusts. Thus the present generation got a 

 better living without loss to the succeeding owners of the trust 

 property; the dilapidations, like those that tell of long chancery 

 suits in England, have disappeared; our city has been improved 

 and beautified, and business accommodated; the public revenue 

 by taxes is increased, and unfettered titles are carried into the 

 world's commerce for the most profitable uses; purchasers hold- 

 ing titles already adjudicated are purged of legal questions. 

 The Act has been in force since April 18th, 185-'', and is popu- 

 larly called the Price Act." "Its beneficence has been often 

 judicially acknowledged."* 



"In 1857 Mr. Price published his 'Law of the Limitation of 

 Actions and of Liens against Real Estate.' In 1874 his treatise 

 on ' The Act for the Sale of Ileal Estate ' (containing 1 93 pages) 

 appeared, as a reading thereon, embracing the reasons for and 

 the decisions upon the Act." 



The increase in population in and around what was originally 

 Philadelphia, that is the two square miles contemplated by its 



*The quotations which refer to the acts Mr. Price aided in having passed by 

 our state Legislature are taken from the History of Chester County, by J. Smith 

 Kuttaey and Gilbert Cope. They were compiled for that work " by Wm. E. Du- 

 bois, assisted by J. S. Price as to legal matters." 



