e courts have said on many
occasions.

The courts, in fact, regard a minor as hardly able to contract even
for necessaries, and he is required to pay for them for the reason
that as he needs them for his comfort and health he ought to pay for
them. In other words, his duty or obligation to pay rests rather on
the ground of an implied contract (which has been already explained)
than of an express one. The force of this reasoning we shall
immediately see.

Suppose a minor should say to a merchant who was unwilling to sell to
minors,--having had, perhaps, sad experience in the way of not
collecting bills of them,--"I am not a minor and so you can safely
trust me. I wish to go into business and wish you would sell me some
goods." Suppose that, relying on his statement, the merchant should
sell him hats or other merchandise for which he would afterward
decline to pay, on the ground that he was a minor. Suppose he proved
that he really was one--could the merchant compel him to pay the bill?
He could not compel him to fulfil his contract, because, as we have
already said, the law does not permit a minor to make a contract
except for necessaries. The court, then, would say to the merchant:
"It is true that you sold the goods to this minor; he has indeed lied
to you; still the court cannot regard a contract as existing between
you and him." On the other hand, a court will not permit a person to
defraud another, and the merchant could make the minor pay for the
_deceit_ or _wrong_ that he had practised on him; and the measure of
this wrong would be the value of the goods he had bought. Thus the
court would render justice to the merchant without admitting that the
minor could make a legal contract for the goods that he had actually
bought and taken away.

III. THE PARTIES TO A CONTRACT (_Continued_)

In the former article we told our readers that there were some persons
who could not make contracts, and among these were INFANTS or MINORS.
In most of the States a person, male or female, is a minor until he or
she is twenty-one years old. In some of the States, among them
Illinois, a female ceases to be a minor at eighteen years of age.

By the Roman law a minor did not reach his majority until the end of
his twenty-fourth year, and this rule has been adopted in France,
Spain, Holland, and some parts of Germany. The French law, though, has
been changed, with one noteworthy exception. A woman cannot make a
contract relating