The trouble is that property, no matter how much you own, is a security only to the person who lends you money. As Miss Demolines says in Trollope’s Last Chronicle of Barset, ‘the land can’t run away’.* This was why so many nineteenth-century investors – local solicitors, private banks and insurance companies – were attracted to mortgages as a seemingly risk-free investment. By contrast, the borrower’s sole security against the loss of his property to such creditors is his income.
