Equity jurisdiction does not accrue to the federal courts because it is thought that the law as administered in equity is more favorable to a party seeking its aid than the law as administered by the courts of a state in which such party has been sued; Cable v. Ins. Co., 191 U. S. 288, 24 Sup. Ct. 74, 48 L. Ed. 188.
Courts of chancery were constituted in some of the states after 1776; and in Penn sylvania, for a short time, as early as 1723, a court of chancery existed; see Rawle, Eq. in Penna.; and in most of the colonies be fore the revolution; Bisph. Eq. n.
In colonial Pennsylvania, and until the act of June 16, 1836, equity, in the absence of courts of equity, was administered through common-law forms. It is pointed out in Rawle, Equity in Penna., that it was not first and only in Pennsylvania that common-law courts enforced equitable principles, and he mentions several heads going back to the Year Books. But the Pennsylvania courts administered under common-law forms all the principles and doctrines of equity. The earliest reported case is Riche v. Broadfield,
1 Dall. 16, 1 L. Ed. 18 (1768). The subject is treated in Laussat's Equity in Penna. and by Sidney G. Fisher in 1 L. Q. R. 455 (2 Sel. Essays in Anglo-Amer. L. H. 810). See also Brightly, Eq. in Penna. A paper in the Re port of the Texas Bar Assoc. (1896) states that "Texas was unquestionably the first state in the American Union controlled by common-law principles to abolish the dis tinction between law and equity in the en forcement of private rights and redress of private wrongs." At the present time, distinct courts of chancery now exist in but six states: Ala bama, Arkansas, Delaware, Mississippi, New Jersey and Tennessee. In the greater num ber of states chancery powers are exercised by judges of common-law courts according to the ordinary practice in chancery. In the remaining states, the distinctions between actions at law and suits in equity have been abolished, but certain equitable remedies are still administered under the statutory form of the civil action. See Bisph. Eq. § 15.