Libertarian_Guard
3rd May 2010, 05:04 PM
VI
Contract
Wealth, in a commercial age, is made up largely of promises. An
important part of everyone's substance consists of advantages which
others have promised to provide for or to render to him; of demands to
have the advantages promised which he may assert not against the world
at large but against particular individuals. Thus the individual
claims to have performance of advantageous promises secured to him. He
claims the satisfaction of expectations created by promises and
agreements. If this claim is not secured friction and waste obviously
result, and unless some countervailing interest must come into account
which would be sacrificed in the process, it would seem that the
individual interest in promised advantages should be secured to the
full extent of what has been assured to him by the deliberate promise
of another. Let us put this in another way. In a former lecture I
suggested, as a jural postulate of civilized society, that in such a
society men must be able to assume that those with whom they deal in
the general intercourse of the society will act in good faith, and as
a corollary must be able to assume that those with whom they so deal
will carry out their undertakings according to the expectations which
the moral sentiment of the community attaches thereto. Hence, in a
commercial and industrial society, a claim or want or demand of
society that promises be kept and that undertakings be carried out in
good faith, a social interest in the stability of promises as a social
and economic institution, becomes of the first importance. This social
interest in the security of transactions, as one might call it,
requires that we secure the individual interest of the promisee, that
is, his claim or demand to be assured in the expectation created,
which has become part of his substance.
p. 62
http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=1655989&pageno=62
Contract
Wealth, in a commercial age, is made up largely of promises. An
important part of everyone's substance consists of advantages which
others have promised to provide for or to render to him; of demands to
have the advantages promised which he may assert not against the world
at large but against particular individuals. Thus the individual
claims to have performance of advantageous promises secured to him. He
claims the satisfaction of expectations created by promises and
agreements. If this claim is not secured friction and waste obviously
result, and unless some countervailing interest must come into account
which would be sacrificed in the process, it would seem that the
individual interest in promised advantages should be secured to the
full extent of what has been assured to him by the deliberate promise
of another. Let us put this in another way. In a former lecture I
suggested, as a jural postulate of civilized society, that in such a
society men must be able to assume that those with whom they deal in
the general intercourse of the society will act in good faith, and as
a corollary must be able to assume that those with whom they so deal
will carry out their undertakings according to the expectations which
the moral sentiment of the community attaches thereto. Hence, in a
commercial and industrial society, a claim or want or demand of
society that promises be kept and that undertakings be carried out in
good faith, a social interest in the stability of promises as a social
and economic institution, becomes of the first importance. This social
interest in the security of transactions, as one might call it,
requires that we secure the individual interest of the promisee, that
is, his claim or demand to be assured in the expectation created,
which has become part of his substance.
p. 62
http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=1655989&pageno=62