There is another decision of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, not so bold and avowed an act of judicial legislation as that just mentioned, but not less transparent, which may be cited as strongly illustrating the same consequences of uncertainty and litigation flowing from a disregard of the principle adverted to. From the year 1794, there had existed in Pennsylvania an act of Assembly limiting the lien of the debts of a decedent on his real estate, at first to seven, afterwards to five years. No question ever arose before the court in regard to it. Lien was considered to mean lien and not obligation: lands to be subject to execution for all debts of the owner prosecuted to judgment, and of course not barred by the Statute of Limitations; and the limitation of the lien merely intended for the protection of purchasers from the heirs or devisees or their lien creditors. Such was recognized to be the true meaning of the law in 1795 (Hannum _v._ Spear, 1 Yeats, 566), and so distinctly ruled in 1830 (Bruch _v._ Lantz, 2 Rawle, 392); yet on grounds palpably only relevant to what, in the opinion of the court, the law ought to be, it was held in 1832, in Kerper _v._ Hoch (1 Watts, 9), that the period named was a limitation not of the lien but of the debt itself, and available in favor of heirs and devisees, volunteers under the debtor and succeeding to his rights _cum onere_. As we have seen, but two cases are to be produced of litigation arising out of this law carried to the highest tribunal from 1794 to 1832. More than twenty cases are to be found reported since, in which that court has been called upon to draw distinctions and settle the precise extent of their own law. Thus a little complicated system has grown up on this construction of the act. A volume, indeed, might be written on Kerper _v._ Hoch and its satellites, when if the act had been let alone to speak for itself, and the prior decision followed, it would have been a simple and intelligible rule of action, until the legislature saw fit to alter it. It seems that this consideration pressed upon at least one of the judges, who joined in that decision; for in a subsequent case, when Kerper _v._ Hoch was cited, that Judge, with characteristic candor, interrupted the counsel with the remark: "We will abide by the rule, but it was erroneously decided." (Hocker's Appeal, 4 Barr, 498.)