CREDITOR I\ DEBTOR'S PROPERTY   721

Under these circumstances, if it appears that the debtor has no personal property, and that his real property, with the combustible improvements thereon, is not more than sufficient to satisfy the judgment, I think the creditor ought to be regarded as having an insurable interest. Although he has no legal or equitable title to or interest in the property, he certainly sustains such a relation thereto that any injury to it would cause a corresponding loss to him; and nothing more than this can be said of the right of a mortgagee, mechanic, or even the legal owner, to insure. In the corpus of the property insured he may have no interest or estate, but he has a pecuniary interest in its preservation, and may sustain a loss by its destruction. Springfield F. & M. Ins. Co. v. Allen. 43 N. Y. 389.

But when the judgment debtor has personal property, out of which the judgment can be made, or when the real property upon which it is a lien is clearly more than sufficient for that purpose, is the judgment creditor thereby precluded from protecting himself hi' ;>>surauce against possible loss from injury to his security by fire? This is a question upon which no direct decision has been found, except the one in Grevemeyer v. S. Mut. F. Ins. Co., supra. But. upon general principles, I think the creditor has an insurable interest; that is. he sustains such a relation to the subject as gives him an interest in its preservation against fire. The law gives the judgment creditor a lien on his debtors' real property as a security for his debt, and whatever may be its value as compared with the amount of the debt, if this value is chiefly or even partly owing to the buildings thereon, and is therefore liable to be depreciated by fire, the creditor sustains such a relation to the property that the may insure against loss by this injury to his security. And the fact that the debtor has more or less personal property at the time is immaterial. When the creditor concludes to enforce his judg• ment, this personal property may have been destroyed or disposed of. And so if the real property to which the lien extends, and upon which the insurance is affected, is then of much greater value than the debt, it may be of much less value before the creditor levies his execution upon it. And if in the meantime it should be injured by fire, he would sustain a loss which he ought to be allowed to protect himself against by insurance. But, nevertheless, the lien of a judgment creditor is a general, and not a specific, one. And, although. as we have seen, circumstances may, in particular cases, make it the same in effect as a specific lien, these are not to be pre-sinned, but must be shown.

The contract for insurance being one for indemnity only it follows that, while the judgment creditor may insure himself against loss by injury from fire to the whole or any part of his security,—the property upon which his judgment is a lien,—yet before he can recover on such contract as for a loss sustained by the peril