as on any technical ground.

Correspondence.

Great difficulties have arisen, and in other systems as well as in the
English, as to the completion of contracts between persons at a
distance. There must be some rule, and yet any rule that can be framed
must seem arbitrary in some cases. On the whole the modern doctrine is
to some such effect as the following:--

The proposer of a contract can prescribe or authorize any mode, or at
least any reasonable mode, of acceptance, and if he specifies none he is
deemed to authorize the use of any reasonable mode in common use, and
especially the post. Acceptance in words is not always required; an
offer may be well accepted by an act clearly referable to the proposed
agreement, and constituting the whole or part of the performance asked
for--say the despatch of goods in answer to an order by post, or the
doing of work bespoken; and it seems that in such cases further
communication--unless expressly requested--is not necessary as matter of
law, however prudent and desirable it may be. Where a promise and not an
act is sought (as where a tradesman writes a letter offering goods for
sale on credit), it must be communicated; in the absence of special
direction letter post or telegraph may be used; and, further, the
acceptor having done his part when his answer is committed to the post.
English courts now hold (after much discussion and doubt) that any delay
or miscarriage in course of post is at the proposer's risk, so that a
man may be bound by an acceptance he never received. It is generally
thought--though there is no English decision--that, in conformity with
this last rule, a revocation by telegraph of an acceptance already
posted would be inoperative. Much more elaborate rules are laid down in
some continental codes. It seems doubtful whether their complication
achieves any gain of substantial justice worth the price. At first sight
it looks easy to solve some of the difficulties by admitting an interval
during which one party is bound and the other not. But, apart from the
risk of starting fresh problems as hard as the old ones, English
principles, as above said, require a contract to be concluded between
the parties at one point of time, and any exception to this would have
to be justified by very strong grounds of expediency. We have already
assumed, but it should be specifically stated, that neither offers nor
acceptances are confined to communications made in spoken o