Note 439 — Chapter XX · THE LAW OF PROPERTY.

It is not essential to a mortgage that the right vested in the mortgagee should in actual fact survive the right secured by it, so as to remain outstanding and redeemable. It is sufficient that in its nature it should be capable of doing so, and therefore requires to be artificially restricted by an obligation or condition of re-assignment or surrender. This re-assignment or surrender may be effected by act of the law, no less than by the act of the mortgagee. The conveyance of the fee simple of land by way of security is necessarily a mortgage and not a lien, whether it revests in the mortgagor ipso jure on the payment of the debt, or does not revest until the mortgagee has executed a deed of reconveyance.