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. We shall have to inquire, later, whether the
principles of Southcote's Case were not also extended in the
opposite direction to cases not falling within it. The reasons
for the rule which it laid down had lost their meaning centuries
before Gawdy and Clench were born, when owners had acquired the
right to sue for the wrongful taking of property in the hands
[187] and the rule itself was a dry precedent likely to be
followed according to the letter because the spirit had departed.
It had begun to totter when the reporter cautioned bailees to
accept in such terms as to get rid of it. /1/
Accordingly, although that decision was the main authority relied
on for the hundred years between it and Coggs v.
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