600 MORETON v. HARRISON

presumption of satisfaction arising from the lapse of twenty years,
as Applicable to ordinary mortgages, does, in like manner, furnish
evidence, or a presumption, that such equitable lien has been satis-
fied or discharged. An equitable lien is founded upon the princi-
ple, that the legal title has not been parted with, or ought not to
be considered as completely vested in the vendee until the whole
purchase money has been paid; because it is deemed unjust to
consider any one as the absolute legal owner of property which he
has purchased, but has not paid for. If the whole legal title remains
in the vendor, he may bring an ejectment, to which a limitation of
not less than twenty years is a bar: but if the formal legal title has
been parted with by the vendor before payment, then his having
so ceded it, gives him an equitable right to enforce payment
here with all the advantages he had as the actual holder of the
legal title; that is, as a mortgagee coming here to foreclose; in
which case, by analogy to the statute of limitations, no time short
of the lapse of twenty years is ever deemed sufficient to raise a
presumption of satisfaction. This court has repeatedly acted upon
these principles, (j)

This bill has been treated by the defendant as a suit insti-
tuted to recover the money secured by the bond alone, or a debt
due by simple contract. If that were the fact, the conclusions
which he has deduced, it is admitted, must inevitably follow. But
it has been shewn that such is not the fact; and the circumstance,
of the purchase money having been secured by a bond, in addition
to the security of the equitable lien, cannot in the slightest degree
affect the plaintiffs' right to the relief they ask by this bill. In all
cases of the sale of real estate the purchase money, if not paid,
may be secured in various ways. The vendor may take a mort-
gage, but by doing so he virtually waives his equitable lien; he
may take a bond, and also a note in addition to a mortgage, or the
equitable lien, of which the bond or note will not generally amount
io a virtual waiver. If he takes all these assurances, then it is
"well settled, that he may proceed at law and in equity upon each
of them at one and the same time, and recover upon all, although
he can have but one satisfaction.(k) To his ejectment at law and
bill in equity to foreclose, twenty years is the limitation; to his suit
upon the bond, twelve years constitutes a bar; and to his action

(/) Lingan v. Henderson, ante, 282.—(k) Pow. Mort 966, note G.; Hughes v.
Edwards, 9 Wheat 494.