NEW LAW BOOKS.
It is the intention of The Green Bag to have its book reviews written by competent revinvers. The usual custom of magazines is to confine book notices to books sent in for review. At the request of subscribers, however, The Green Bag will be glad to review or notice any recently published laiu book whether . received for rez'iew or not. THE LAW OF CONTRACTS. By Theophilus Parsons. Ninth edition, edited by John M. Gould. Boston : Little, Brown and Com pany, 1904. Three volumes, (cccvii +646+xx+974+ix+749 pp.) As the original edition appeared in 1853, the present edition celebrates approximately the fiftieth anniversary of this popular work. That this edition is the ninth indi cates clearly the estimation in which tinwork is held by the profession. It is hardly conceivable that there is an American law office of any consequence which does not contain at least one edition, for Parsons on Contracts is probably the only rival of Greenleaf on Evidence for the highest place in the estimation of the American bar as a work of practical value. From the point of view of theoretical science, the author is extremely easy to criticise. At the very outset he claims for his favorite subject a jurisdiction over very nearly the whole field of law, and thus raises the question whether he is not too careless of legal distinctions. Here are his words: The Law of Contracts, in its widest sense, may be regarded as including nearly all the law which regulates the relations of human life. Indeed, it may be looked upon as the basis of human society. All social life presumes it. and rests upon it; for out of contracts express or implied, declared or understood, grow all rights, all duties, all obligations, and all law. Almost the whole procedure of human life implies, or rather, is, the continual fulfilment of contracts. Even those duties, or those acts of kindness and affection, which may seem most remote from contract or compulsion of any kind, are nevertheless within the scope of the
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obligation of contracts. The parental love which provides for the infant when, in the beginning of its life, it can do nothing for itself, nor care for itself, would seem to be so pure an offering of affection that the idea of a contract could in no way belong to it. But even here, although these duties are gener ally discharged from a feeling which bor rows no strength from a sense of obliga tion, there is still such an obligation. It is implied by the cares of the past, which have perpetuated society from generation to gen eration; by that absolute necessity which makes the performance of these duties the condition of the preservation of human life; and by the implied obligation on the part of the unconscious objects of this care, that when by its means they shall have grown into strength, and age has brought weakness upon those to whom they are thus indebted. they will acknowledge and repay the debt. Indeed, the law recognizes and enforces this obligation, to a certain degree, on both sides, as will be shown hereafter. Further, in all the relations of social life, its good order and prosperity depend upon the due fulfilment of the contracts which bind all to all. Sometimes these contracts are deliber ately expressed with all the precision of law, and are armed with all its sanctions. More frequently they are, though still expressed, simpler in form and more general in lan guage, and leave more to the intelligence, the justice, and honesty of the parties. Far more frequently they are not expressed at all: and for their definition and extent we must look to the common principles which all are supposed to understand and acknowl edge. In this sense, contract is coordinate and commensurate with dut; and it is a familiar principle of the law, of which we shall have much to say hereafter, and which has a wide, though far from a universal application, that whatsoever it is certain that a man ought to do, that the law sup poses him to have promised to do." From this rhetorical prelude, one might well infer that the author would extend the subject of Contracts in such a way as to in
