So in the case of the
farrier, when he had taken charge of the horse, he could not stop
at the critical moment [279] and leave the consequences to
fortune. So, still more clearly, when the ferryman undertook to
carry a horse across the Humber, although the water drowned the
horse, his remote acts of overloading his boat and pushing it
into the stream in that condition occasioned the loss, and he was
answerable for it.
In the foregoing cases the duty was independent of contract, or
at least was so regarded by the judges who decided them, and
stood on the general rules applied to human conduct even by the
criminal law. The immediate occasion of the damage complained of
may have been a mere omission letting in the operation of natural
forces. But if you connect it, as it was connected in fact, with
the previous dealings, you have a course of action and conduct
which, taken as a whole, has caused or occasioned the harm.
The objection may be urged, to be sure, that there is a
considerable step from holding a man liable for the consequences
of his acts which he might have prevented, to making him
answerable for not having interfered with the course of nature
when he neither set it in motion nor opened the door for it to do
harm, and that there is just that difference between making a
hole in a roof and leaving it open, or cutting the cord and
letting it bleed, on the one side, and the case of a farrier who
receives a sick horse and omits proper precautions, on the other.
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