Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume I.djvu/209

AGEN AGES 185 AGEN (anc. Aginnum, or Agennum), the chief town of the department of Lot-et-Ga- ronne, France, on the right bank of the Garonne, 73 m. S. E. of Bordeaux ; pop. in 1866, 18,222. The old quarter of the town is composed chiefly of narrow streets. The houses in the modern quarter are built on the slope of a hill adorned with trees and vine- yards. Agen has been the see of a bishop since 347. Among the distinguished natives of the town were Sulpicius Severus, Lacepede, and the younger Scaliger, whose more emi- nent father Julius removed hither from Verona. The last representative of the troubadours, the poet Jasmin, was also a native and resident of Agen. It is famous for its prunes and its man- ufacture of serges. AGENT, in law, a person appointed to perform an act for another. He may be either special or general, or may be appointed either ex- pressly or impliedly. No form of appointment is required. An agent may be created either by deed, or by a simple letter, or by word of mouth. To execute legal instruments, the authority must be equal in value with the instrument to be executed; thus a power to sign and execute deeds must be created by a power under seal. Some persons are agents by the very nature of their business, such as attorneys, auctioneers, bailiffs, brokers, ship- masters, factors, and others. The agent may bind his principal by his acts. Such liability must necessarily be brought within the scope of his authority ; thus, the captain of a ship could not bind his owners in the purchase of a piece of land. The agent entering into a contract on behalf of a principal whose name he dis- closes is protected from personal liability; but, if acting on behalf of a principal un- known, he is himself liable, unless the third party elect to proceed against the principal. A professional agent is bound to exercise duo diligence, and to bring a fair degree of skill and knowledge to the discharge of the duties he undertakes. If he be an unprofessional agent, he is still bound to exercise the ordinary judgment of a prudent man in the conduct of his own affairs. The circumstance of his being a gratuitous agent does not alter the liability of the agent to the principal in this respect. The limits of an agent's powers must be determined by the nature of his instruc- tions. If special, he is limited to their strict letter; if general, he must act for the best interest of his principal, and the usages of trade and commerce will have considerable weight in determining the propriety of his conduct. He is bound to give early notice of all occurrences affecting his principal's inter- ests ; he is bound to account for funds imme- diately on their receipt, and even for the usufruct of the same if retained or employed by him ; he may not buy from nor sell to his principal, unless by express assent; and in some cases contracts for the benefit of a person acting in a fiduciary capacity are absolutely void. The rights of an agent are to reimburse- ment of all charges and expenses which he may have incurred in the proper discharge of his duties, and not caused by his own careless- ness or negligence. He is also entitled to re- muneration of a reasonable character for his services ; and lastly, he is entitled to indemnity against the consequences of all acts done by him on behalf of his principal within his powers, provided that such acts are not wrong- ful to third parties, in which case the agent is personally liable. For the more complete pro- tection of his rights in these respects, he has a lien upon all property of his principal placed in his hands. The position of third parties may be inferred from the foregoing. The agent may, in his dealings with third parties, bind his principal hi all matters fairly within the scope and object of his employment. If he exceed his powers, the third party has no claim whatever on the principal; the claim which the third party may have on the agent must depend on the nature of the case, and in . particular on the fact of his principal being disclosed. Public officers, whether acting within their powers or not, are not liable for contracts entered into as such public officers. For wrongful acts and injuries (not of a crim- inal character) committed by agents, such as trespasses under color of law, or accidents resulting from negligence, the principal may be made liable, provided that the agent's acts be incontestably within the line of his duty. But the perpetrator of a wrong not being entitled, by the policy of the law, to shield himself behind a principal, the agent is liable as well as the principal. AGES, a term used to designate various epochs in the civilization of the human race. Hesiod mentions five, and Ovid four. The golden age, synchronous with the reign of Saturn, was a period of patriarchal simplicity, when the earth yielded its fruits spontaneously and spring was eternal; the silver age, governed by Jupiter, was a lawless time, in which the seasons were first divided, agriculture took its rise, and men began to hold property in land ; the brazen age, or reign of Nep- tune, was an epoch of war and violence; in the heroic age (omitted by Ovid) the world began to aspire toward better things ; and in the iron or Plutonian age, in which Hesiod believed himself to be living, justice and piety had disappeared from the earth. Fichte divid- ed human history into five ages, of which he conceived that we were in the third; while Hegel and Comte reckoned three, placing us in the last. European archffiologists'have divided the prehistoric period into the age of stone, so called because men are supposed to have been at that time unacquainted with the use of metals, and to have made their rude imple- ments of the chase and husbandry exclusively of stone ; and the age of bronze, when a com- pound of copper and tin was employed. The recent discoveries among the remains of the