dependent of the fact of seizure, and can derive no aid therefrom. The inquiry is whether he is a “creditor” within the spirit of the law, and not whether he is a creditor with process which he has levied on the property covered by the mortgage. If it were necessary that he should have seized the property before he can be regarded as a creditor within the statute, great wrong could be done the public by the withholding of a chattel mortgage from record, for which those wronged would have no redress. After a chattel mortgage had been given, and while it was withheld from record, a loan might be made to the mortgagor, or credit might be extended to him on the sale of property, the creditor relying upon the apparent freedom of the debtor's property from liens. All the harm that could be done the creditor has now been consummated. The subsequent filing of the chattel mortgage cannot undo it. It would be a gross perversion of the statute requiring chattel mortgages to be filed to assert that the right of this creditor successfully to attack the unfiled mortgage depends on his seizing the property under process before the mortgage is filed; that until then he cannot be considered a creditor as to whom the mortgage is void. It is true that he must seize the property before he can raise the point, but he need not seize it before the instrument is filed. Whenever he does seize it, whether before or after the filing of the mortgage. he is then in a position to urge that he was before the mortgage was filed a “creditor,” within the meaning of the statute. Strong authority exists to support this proposition, that the fact of a levy under process does not enter into the question whether the creditor is one whom it was the purpose of the law to protect as against unfiled chattel mortgages. Thompson v. Van Vechten, 27 N.Y. 568. In this case the court say: ‘But, when they [creditors] present themselves with their process, they may, I think, go back to the origin of their debt, and show, if they can, that, when it was contracted, the incumbrance with which they are now confronted existed, and was kept secret by being withheld from the proper office.” See also, Feary v. Cummings, 41 Mich. 376, 1 N.
