WATKINS v. WORTHINGTON. 525

not necessary to bring all the co-obligors of the deceased before
the court; it is manifest, that these principles can derive no sup-
port from this rule which requires every one interested to be made
parties, to the end that complete justice may be done among all.

But this general rule which requires each debtor, bound by a
joint and several obligation to be brought before the court, although
it may, to a certain extent, be well founded as to cases where a
single creditor sues his living debtors only, or sues one of his joint
debtors together with the representatives of another, who is dead,
for the recovery of no more than his own particular debt; yet it
cannot be applied to a suit, the especial object of which is to have
the whole estate of the deceased sold for the payment of his debts;
or so much of it as may be necessary for that purpose. A credi-
tor's suit, or a bill which presents a case which requires to be
treated as a creditor's suit, does not profess to be a demand of
payment by a single creditor for himself alone; but is a call upon
the court to cause the assets, real and personal, of a deceased
debtor to be accounted for and administered in due course of law
for the benefit of all the creditors of the deceased. This is the
nature of a creditor's suit according to the English law as well as
the law of Maryland; and it is expressly declared by our act of
assembly, with an evident reference to a creditor's suit, that the
real assets shall be administered by the heir, of full age, in the
same order as the personal assets are directed to be applied in pay-
ment of debts by an executor; and that all courts of law and
equity shall observe the same rules, (c)

It was the course of this court for some time after the establish-
ment of the republic, in a creditor's suit, merely to decree in gene-
ral terms, that in so far as the deceased debtor's personal estate
should be insufficient to pay his debts, his real estate should be
sold for that purpose; to appoint a trustee to make the sale, after
he had given bond for the faithful discharge of his trust; and to
direct him to pay the debts due to the originally suing creditors,
whose claims were established by the decree; but, as to all other
claims and every other matter, leaving to him the same extent of
discretionary authority in the administration of the proceeds of the
sale of the real assets as that allowed to an administrator of the
personalty; or in other words, giving him the power to dispose of
and distribute the proceeds of the sale of the real estate in due

(c) 1785, ch. 80, s. 7.

67 v.2