the obligation of a promise, would be to allow a latitude, which might evacuate the force of almost all promises; and on the other hand, to gird the obligation so tight as to make no allowances for manifest and fundamental errors, would, in many instances, be productive of great hardships and absurdity.

It has long been controverted amongst moralists, whether promises be binding, which are extorted by violence or fear. The obligation of all promises results, we have seen, from the necessity or the use of that confidence which mankind repose in them. The question, therefore, whether these promises are binding, will depend upon this, whether mankind, upon the whole, are benefitted by the confidence placed in such promises? A higway-man attacks youand being disappointed of his booty, threatens or prepares to murder you:-you promise, with many solemn asseverations, that if he will spare your life, he shall find a purse of money left for him, at a place appointed;-upon the faith of this promise, he forbears from further violence. Now, your life was saved by the conndence reposed in a promise extorted by fear; and the lives of many others may be saved by the same. This is a good consequence. On the other hand, a confidence in promises like these would greatly facilitate the perpetration of robberies: they might be made the instruments of almost unlimited extortion. This is a bad consequence; and in the question between the importance of these opposite consequences, resides the doubt concerning the obligation of such promises.

There are other cases which are plainer; as where a magistrate confines a disturber of the public peace in gaol, till he promise to behave better; or a prisoner of war promises, if set at liberty, to return within a certain time. These promises, say moralists, are binding, because the violence or duress is just; but the truth is, because there is the same use of confidence in these promises, as of confidence in the promises of a person at perfect liberty.

Vows are promises to God. The obligation cannot be made out upon the same principle as that of other promises. The violation of them, nevertheless, implies a want of reverence to the Supreme Being, which is enough to make it sinful.

There appears no command or encouragement in the Christian Scriptures to make vows, much less any authority to break through them when they are made. The few instances* of vows which we read of in the New Testament, were religiously observed.

The rules we have laid down concerning promises, are applicable

*Acts. xviii. 18. xxi. 23.

to vows. Thus Jepthah's vow, taken in the sense in which that transaction is commonly understood, was not binding; because the performance, in that contingency, became unlawful.

CHAPTER VI.

CONTRACTS.

A CONTRACT is a mutual promise. The obligation therefore of contracts, the sense in which they are to be interpreted, and the cases where they are not binding, will be the same as of promises.

From the principle established in the last chapter, "that the obligation of promises is to be measured by the expectation which "the promiser any how voluntarily and knowingly excites," results a rule, which governs the construction' of all contracts, and is ca pable, from the simplicity of it, of being applied with great ease and certainty; viz. That,

Whatever is expected by one side, and known to be so expected by the other, is to be deemed a part or condition of the contract.

The several kinds of contracts, and the order in which we propose to consider them, may be exhibited at one view, thus:

THE rule of justice, which wants most to be inculcated in the making of bargains, is, that the seller is bound in conscience to disclose the faults of what he offers to sale. Amongst other methods of proving this, one may be the following:

I suppose it will be allowed, that to advance a direct falsehood in quality recommendation of our wares, by ascribing to them some Now compare which we know that they have not, is dishonest.

with this the designed concealment of some fault which we know that they have. The motives and the effects of actions are the only points of comparison in which their moral quality can differ; but the motive in these two cases is the same, viz. to procure a higher price than we expect otherwise to obtain: The effect, that is, the prejudice to the buyer, is also the same; for he finds himself equally out of pocket by his bargain, whether the commodity, when he gets home with it, turn out worse than he supposed, by the want of some quality which he expected, or the discovery of some fault which he did not expect. If therefore actions be the same, as to all moral purposes, which proceed from the same motives, and produce the same effects, it is making a distinction without a difference, to esteem it a cheat to magnify beyond the truth the virtues of what we have to sell, but none to conceal its faults.

It adds to the value of this kind of honesty, that the faults of many things are of a nature not to be known by any but by the persons who have used them; so that the buyer has no security from imposition but in the ingenuousness and integrity of the seller.

There is one exception, however, to this rule, namely, where the silence of the seller implies some fault in the thing to be sold, and where the buyer has a compensation in the price for the risk which he runs ; as where a horse, in a London repository, is sold by public auction without warranty, the want of warranty is notice of some unsoundness, and produces a proportionable abatement in the price. To this of concealing the faults of what we want to put off, may be referred the practice of passing bad money. This practice we sometimes hear defended by a vulgar excuse, that we have taken the money for good, and must therefore get rid of it. Which excuse is much the same as if one, who had been robbed upon the highway, should imagine he had a right to reimburse himself out of the pocket of the first traveller he met; the justice of which reasoning the traveller possibly may not comprehend.

Where there exists no monopoly or combination, the marketprice is always a fair price, because it will always be proportionable to the use and sarcity of the article. Hence, there need be no scruple about demanding or taking the market-price; and all those expressions, "provisions are extravagantly dear," "corn bears an "unreasonable price," and the like, import no unfairness or unreasonableness in the seller.

If your tailor or your draper charge, or even ask of you, more for a suit of clothes than the market-price, you complain that you are imposed upon; you pronounce the tradesman who makes such a charge dishonest; although as the man's goods were his own, and

he had a right to prescribe the terms upon which he would consent to part with them, it may be questioned what dishonesty there can be in the case, and wherein the imposition consists. Whoever opens a shop, or in any manner exposes goods to public sale, virtually engages to deal with his customers at a market-price; because it is upon the faith and idea of such an engagement that any one comes within his shop-doors, or offers to treat with him. This is expected by the buyer; is known to be so expected by the seller; which is enough, according to the rule delivered above, to make it a part of the contract between them, though not a syllable be said about it. The breach of this implied contract constitutes the fraud

inquired after.

Hence, if you disclaim any such engagement, you may set what value you please upon your property. If, upon being asked to sell a house, you answer that the house suits your fancy or conveniency, and that you will not turn yourself out of it under such a price; the price fixed may be double of what the house cost, or would fetch at a public sale, without any imputation of injustice or extortion upon you.

If the thing sold be damaged, or perished between the sale and the delivery, ought the buyer to bear the loss, or the seller? This will depend upon the particular construction of the contract. If the seller, either expressly, or by implication, or by custom, engage to deliver the goods; as if I buy a set of china, and the china-man ask me to what place he shall bring or send them, and they are broken in the conveyance, the seller must abide by the loss. If the thing sold remain with the seller, at the instance or for the conveniency of the buyer, then the buyer undertakes the risk; as, if I buy a horse, and mention that I will send for it on such a day, (which is in effect desiring that it may continue with the seller till I do send for it,) then whatever misfortune befals the horse in the mean time, must be at my cost.

And here once for all, I would observe, that innumerable questions of this sort are determined solely by custom; not that custom possesses any property authority to alter or ascertain the nature of right and wrong, but because the contracting parties are presumed to include in their stipulation all the conditions which custom has annexed to contracts of the same sort; and when the usage is notorious, and no exception made to it, this presumption is generally agreeable to the fact.*

*It happens here, as in many cases, that what the parties ought to do, and what a judge or arbitrator would award to be done, may be very different. What the

If I order a pipe of port from a wine-merchant abroad; at what period the property passes from the merchant to me; whether upor delivery of the wine at the merchant's warehouse; upon its being put on ship-board at Oporto; upon the arrival of the ship in England; at its destined port; or not till the wine be committed to my servants, or deposited in my cellar; are all questions which admit of no decision, but what custom points out. Whence in justice, as well as law, what is called the custom of merchants, regulates the construction of mercantile concerns.

CHAPTER VIII.

CONTRACTS OF HAZARD.

By contracts of hazard, I mean gaming and insurance.

What some say of this kind of contracts, "that one side ought "not to have any advantage over the other," is neither practicable nor true. It is not practicable: for that perfect equality of skill and judgment which this rule requires, is seldom to be met withI might not have it in my power to play with fairness a game at cards, billiards, or tennis, lay a wager at a horse-race, or under-write a policy of insurance, once in a twelve-month, if I must wait till I meet with a person, whose art, skill, and judgement in these matters, is neither greater nor less than my own. Nor is this equality requisite to the justice of the contract. One party may give to the other the whole of the stake, if he please, and the other party may justly accept it, if it be given him; much more therefore may one give to the other a part of the stake, or, what is exactly the same thing, an advantage in the chance of winning the whole.

The proper restriction is, that neither side have an advantage by means of which the other is not aware; for this is an advantage taken without being given. Although the event be still an uncer tainty, your advantage in the chance has a certain value; and so much of the stake as that value amounts to, is taken from your adversary without his knowledge, and therefore without his consent. If I sit down to a game at whist, and have an advantage over the adversary, by means of a better memory, closer attention, or a su-perior knowledge of the rules and chances of the game, the advan

parties ought to do by virtue of their contract, depends upon their consciousness at the time of making it; whereas a third person finds it necessary to found his judgement upon presumptions, which presumptions may be false, although the most probable that he could proceed by.