Chap. II.]

PRINCIPAL AND AGENT.

177

Whoever undertakes another man’s business, thereby makes ithis own ; for he knows that the business was committed to himwith that expectation. If, therefore, he has used such a degree ofactivity, and practised such caution, as the importance of thebusiness, in bis judgment, deserved ; that is, as much as he wouldhave used, if the same interest of his own had been at stake, hehas discharged the full measure of his duty, although it shouldafterwards be found, that, by greater activity, diligence, and per-severance, he might have transacted the business with greateradvantage.* This is the general principle of the morals of prin-cipal and agent ; — but still some expansion and application ofthe principle cannot fail to be useful. This is the more manifest,because the relation of principal and agent is but one branch ofthe more comprehensive relation of employer and the person em-ployed ; and, as all persons are either employers of others, or areemployed by them, and often both, the rights and duties growingout of this relation belong, in substance, to all the modificationsof the more comprehensive one, and ought, therefore, to be ac-curately as well as universally understood.

The authority of the agent may be created by writing, or ver-bally without writing ; and, for the ordinary purposes of business,the latter is sufficient. Or the agency may be inferred from therelation of the parties and the nature of the employment, withoutproof of any express appointment. It is sufficient, that there besatisfactory evidence of the fact, that the principal employed theagent, and that the agent undertook the trust. And the extentof the authority of an agent will sometimes be extended or variedon the ground of implied authority, according to the pressure ofcircumstances connected with the business with which he is in-trusted. Even an acquiescence in the assumed agency of an-other, when the acts of the agent are brought to the knowledgeof the principal, is equivalent to an express authority. By per-mitting 'another to hold himself out to the world as his agent, theprincipal adopts his acts, and will be held bound to the personwho gives credit thereafter to the other in the capacity of hisagent.

* Paley’s Moral and Political Philosophy, p. 99.

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