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Updated: July 26, 2025
In truth, there were two sets of duties, one not peculiar to bailees, arising from the assumpsit or public calling of the defendant, as just explained; the other, the ancient obligation, peculiar to them as such, of which Southcote's Case was an example.
If he carelessly staves in the cask, there would perhaps be no need to allege that he undertook to carry it, and on principle, and according to the older cases, if an undertaking was alleged, no consideration for the assumpsit need be stated. /1/ The ground of complaint in that case would be a wrong, irrespective of contract.
In the third year of that reign /6/ it was objected to au action upon an assumpsit for not building a mill, that it was not shown what the defendant was to have for doing it. The case turned upon a question which was debated for centuries before it was settled, whether debt would lie for a sum of money promised by the defendant to the plaintiff if he would marry the defendant's daughter.
Thus, where the defendant retained the plaintiff to be to his aunt at ten shillings a week, it was held that assumpsit would lie, because the service, though not beneficial to the defendant, was a charge or detriment to the plaintiff. /1/ The old questions were reargued, and views which were very near prevailing in debt under Henry VI., prevailed in assumpsit under Elizabeth and James.
The more important alternative allegation, the assumpsit, had the effect in the end of introducing the not intrinsically objectionable doctrine that all duties arising from a bailment are founded on contract. /2/ But this allegation, having now a special action to which it had given rise, was not much used where the action was tort, while the other averment occurs with increasing frequency.
But in the true archaic spirit the doctrine was not separated or distinguished from the remedy which introduced it, and thus debt in modern times has presented the altered appearance of a duty limited to cases where the consideration was of a special sort. The later fortunes of assumpsit can be briefly told.
But as it will not be possible to discuss covenants further, and as consideration formed the main topic of the last Lecture, I will take up that first. Furthermore, as there is an historical difference between consideration in debt and in assumpsit, I shall confine myself to the latter, which is the later and more philosophical form.
The ground of liability was that the defendant had started upon the undertaking, so that his negligent omission, which let in the damage, could be connected with his acts as a part of his dealing with the thing. /3/ We shall find Lord Holt recognizing this original purport of assumpsit when we come to Coggs v. Bernard. Of course it was not confined to cases of bailment.
If the goods had been stolen, the bailee's liability rested neither on his common calling nor on his assumpsit and his neglect, but arose from the naked facts that he had accepted a delivery and that the goods were gone, and in such cases it ought to have been enough to allege those facts in the declaration. /1/ But it was very natural that the time-honored foundations for the action on the case in its more limited application should still be laid in the pleadings, even after the scope of the action had been enlarged.
Hence, it was inferred that, wherever an assumpsit was laid, even in all action of tort for damage to property, it was the allegation of a contract, and that a consideration must be shown for the undertaking, although the contrary had been decided in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. /1/ But the motion did not prevail, and judgment was given for the plaintiff.
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