THE LAW OF CONTRACTS.

LECTURE I.

ON THE NATURE AND CLASSIFICATION OF CONTRACTS, AND ON CONTRACTS BY deed.

THE whole practice of our English Courts of Common Law, if we except their criminal jurisdiction, with which we have at present no concern, and their administration of the law of real property, of which, as Real Property Law forms the subject-matter of another distinct class of Lectures, it is not my intention to speak, —if, I say, we except these two heads, to which may possibly be added those cases which fall within the fiscal jurisdiction peculiar to the Court of Exchequer, the whole of the remaining subjects with which the jurisdiction of a Court of Common Law is conversant may be distributed into two classes, Contracts and Torts. Of this you can easily satisfy yourselves by putting to your own minds any conceivable case of legal inquiry. If it do not involve a question of criminal law, or of the title to land, or of Exchequer jurisdiction, *will find that it resolves itself into a contract or a tort. Thus, suppose it to be the non-performance of a covenant, the non-payment of a bond, the dishonour of a bill of exchange, the non-payment of rent, the default of a surety, these are all subjects of inquiry arising from contracts. So, again, if it involve an

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assault on the person, an injury to the reputation by libel or slander, a nuisance to the dwelling or the or the premises, a conversion of property,-these are only so many descriptions of torts. And as the subjects of legal inquiry divide themselves, so do the forms in which the inquiry is carried on; for all actions, as you are aware, are of TORT or of CONTRACT, a division which, as you see, is rendered necessary by the very nature of things, and does not result from any arbitrary principle of arrangement.

Now, therefore, the whole subject-matter of the inquiries about which our Courts of Law are conversant (excepting the cases I have excepted) being distributable into these two heads, Contract and Tort, I am about to take the former of them, that of contract, and state to you those principles of every-day recurrence which govern the law of England relative to contracts, and which it is absolutely necessary that every lawyer must bear constantly in mind, and have (to use the ordinary expression) at his fingers' ends, if he will avoid falling into egregious mistakes in the course of his daily practice. This is all that can be done in an elementary lecture *like the present. Nice distinctions and subtile disquisitions are neither very intelligible when delivered viva voce, nor very easily carried away by the recollection.

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All Contracts are divided by the Common Law of England into three classes :

1. Contracts by Matter of Record.

2. Contracts under Seal.

3. Contracts not under Seal, or Simple Contracts. With regard to contracts by matter of record, they are so little used in the ordinary affairs of private individuals, that I may dismiss them in a very few