Blackstone's language is
worth quoting: "There is yet a fourth species of servants, if
they may be so called, being rather in a superior, a ministerial
capacity; such as stewards, factors, and bailiffs: whom, however,
the law considers as servants pro tempore, with regard to such of
their acts as affect their master's or employer's property." /3/
[229] It is very true that in modern times many of the effects of
either relation--master and servant or principal and agent--may
be accounted for as the result of acts done by the master
himself. If a man tells another to make a contract in his name,
or commands him to commit a tort, no special conception is needed
to explain why he is held; although even in such cases, where the
intermediate party was a freeman, the conclusion was not reached
until the law had become somewhat mature. But, if the title
Agency deserves to stand in the law at all, it must be because
some peculiar consequences are attached to the fact of the
relation. If the mere power to bind a principal to an authorized
contract were all, we might as well have a chapter on ink and
paper as on agents. But it is not all. Even in the domain of
contract, we find the striking doctrine that an undisclosed
principal has the rights as well as the obligations of a known
contractor,--that he can be sued, and, more remarkable, can sue
on his agent's contract.
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