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(and, in every view except the strict legal view, he is right in supposing) that he may owe a given sum of money without owing any specified coins." Taylor v. Portington, p. 147, is a good example of an agreement not being certain enough to be specifically enforced, though it does not appear to have been disputed that it was an actionable contract. It sets one thinking on the vanity of human wishes to read of a lessee being seriously aggrieved at the drawing-rooms not being "handsomely decorated according to the present style' (Early Victorian of 1854). In Andrews v. Belfield, p. 885, the Court of Common Pleas found no difficulty in holding that a contract for building a carriage might be conditional, if the parties chose to make it so, on the buyer's approval of it when built, assuming that he did not reject it out of mere caprice. The defendant's taste in this case was "somewhat nice and fastidious," per Williams, J., but the plaintiff had submitted himself to it.

Holmes v. Onion, p. 892, was a case of an unusual kind and may well have seemed puzzling at the time. All it decides, however, is that if a man chooses to ratify an agreement made with his servant by a third person who knows nothing of him, and to claim the benefit of it for himself, he must also take the risk of being held liable for the servant's negligence in executing the work contracted for. This is plainly the right decision when the facts are once ascertained. Smith v. Neale, p. 611, may or may not have fulfilled the original intention of the Statute of Frauds. But it is certain that no operative words in that statute have said that in any event an agreement within either s. 4 or s. 17 must be proved wholly by writing, or that the acceptance must be in writing; and the judges were bound to give some significance, if possible, to the peculiar form of words employed. A learned gentleman of the Pennsylvania Bar has lately been engaged here in minute investigation of the original documents relative to the framing and passing of the statute, and the result of his researches may be to make Lord Nottingham's or Lord

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Guildford's apparent neglect of elementary rules of drafting more intelligible.

There were already controversies about "privileged cabs " at railway stations half a century ago: see Beadell v. E. C. Rail. Co., p. 778, Painter v. L. B. & S. C. Rail. Co., p. 841. It is curious that a case so frequently cited as Pederson v. Lotinga, p. 935, should have escaped both the authorized reporters and the Law Journal at the time. We reserve any comment on the leading decision of Tuff v. Warman, p. 865, till we reach the final report in the Exchequer Chamber.

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