718   INSURABLE INTEREST

debts or duties of the owner. It is not the name of the right, which gives or refuses an insurable interest; it is the character of the right. A specific lien gives an insurable interest, because a loss of the particular property is at once seen to affect disastrously the specific lienor. But when a right to payment of a debt exists, which can be satisfied only from a particular piece of property, is there not the same result from the same cause? If I have a debt against another, and he have but one piece of real estate from which my debt may be made, and he die leaving no personal estate, though in technical language my lien may not be specific upon that real estate, it is true in fact, that there is a specific piece of property from which alone I may hope to satisfy my lien, and which is alone legally bound to satisfy it, and I am, practically, just like one to whom that piece of real property has been specifically pledged for a specific debt. If the latter, for that he may suffer pecuniary loss by the burning of that real property, has such an interest, as that he may insure against that burning, I have such an interest also, and I too may insure. The probability, nay the possibility, of the payment of the plaintiff's debt, out of the property of the deceased debtor rested entirely upon the contingency of this real estate remaining without serious impairment in value.

* * * I know of no decision in this State bearing more directly upon this precise question, than that in Herkimer v. Rice (27 N. Y. 163). The propositions advanced there are sufficient, if sustainable, or if to be taken as authority, to uphold an insurable interest in the plaintiff in the case in hand. Denio, Ch. J., there says : * * * "No property in the thing insured is required. It is enough, if the assured is so situated as to be liable to loss, if it be destroyed by the peril insured against. Creditors having no other means of enforcing their debts, but having a direct and certain right to subject the real estate to a sale for their benefit, have an interest as positive and absolute as one having a specific lien, or even as the owner himself. * * * The creditors whether by simple contract or specialty, under our laws, are parties interested in the real estate, when there is a deficiency in the personal, for they have power to subject it to the payment of their debts." * * * Again, * * * "the creditors of an insolvent estate are generally numerous, and having no opportunity for concerted action, except through the executor or administrators, they could scarcely ever avail themselves of the advantage of insurance, unless by the agency of the representatives. If the administrators cannot insure, the parties interested, the creditors, will be excluded from a remedy which all other persons having a similar interest possess." * * * I conclude that a creditor of the estate of one deceased whose personal property left is insufficient for the payment of his debts, has an insurable interest in the sole real