wages. Such compensation does not form a debt due from the servant to the master, and the master has only a right to bring an action for it, the precise amount being settled by the jury or County Court judge trying the case. Although, therefore, the master has no right to set off the compensation against the wages, as one debt is set off against another, yet practically he is able to deduct it from the wages. For, if the servant refused to allow the compensation to be deducted, the master might refuse to pay him the wages at all, and might leave him to bring his action, and when the servant had adopted that course, the master might bring a cross action for the compensation. The servant would win one action and the master the other, and the balance only would be paid to the servant; and thus, except for the costs, the result would be the same as if the deduction had been made in the first instance. If this were explained to the servant, he would probably raise no objection to the deduction being made on payment of wages. Supposing matters proceed as far, it is probable that the action would be brought in the County Court. In that case the master should at once enter his plaint, in order to have his cross action tried at the same time as the servant's action for wages, or at least not later than it. These remarks apply to a case where, as usual, no arrangement has been made as to the master receiving compensation for the negligence of the servant. But it is desirable, even in the case of domestic servants, to make an arrangement at the hiring that fair deductions may be made for loss and breakages. In that case no cross action need be brought by the master, as must be done where there is no such arrangement, but the master will, at the proper time, pay or tender the wages, less the compensation; and then, if the servant brings an action to recover more, the payment or tender can be proved, and the servant can be crossexamined as to the breakages-and if the latter were fairly reckoned by the master at the outset, the servant cannot recover anything. The arrangement can be made in the middle of the service as well as at the beginning. The master should, in that case, tell the servant that if he does not agree to pay for breakages happening through his negligence, he must give the servant notice to quit the service; and if the servant then consents, the master's keeping him in the service will be a sufficient consideration. A servant is in duty bound not to commit any fraud or do any wrongful act, whereby the master may be rendered liable to an action by a third person; and if he does commit such a wrongful act, the servant will be liable to an action by the master to recover the damages he may have been obliged to pay the third person. For instance, if a master set his servant to dig a drain across a public road and told him to fence it from the road or put a light to mark the spot, and a person driving by received injury owing to the neglect of such precautions, the servant would be bound to indemnify his master for the expense and trouble he incurred in satisfying that person's claims. And it will make no difference whether the master's orders were general, relating to all work of the kind, or special, applying only to the job in hand. So, also, if the foreman of a factory, knowing that by using a certain machine he would be infringing a patent right, nevertheless, without his master's orders or sanction and without the patentee's license, puts the machine to work, he would be liable to indemnify his master for whatever trouble and expense he might be put to in consequence of the wrongful act. At the same time it is not certain that if a master brought an action against his servant for damage caused by his fraudulent misrepresentation, he would recover the amount he had been obliged to pay the third person. No doubt, if the second jury took the same view as the first with respect to the fact of the fraudulent misrepresentation having been made, they would accept the verdict of such jury, with the costs incident to the trial, as the measure of the damages which the master had sustained. But it would be quite open to the servant again to raise before the second jury the question whether he had made a fraudulent misrepresentation at all; and if the second jury, differing from the first, came to the conclusion that he had not, they would of course find in his favour, and the master would recover no damages, and would have also to pay all the costs of the second action. And in one case it was said that the proprietor of a newspaper, who had been convicted and fined for a libel, which had been inserted in his newspaper, without his knowledge or consent, by the editor, could not recover in an action against the editor the fine which he has had to pay. Again it is considered to be a species of fraud if a servant endeavours to induce his master's customers to leave him, and transfer their custom to him, whilst he is still his master's servant; but there is nothing to prevent a servant leaving his master and setting up business in opposition to him, unless he has especially agreed not to do so. A servant who has received money from his master is accountable to him for the expenditure of it, according to the orders of the master, and if he so expend it he cannot be made to refund the money, although the person to whom he paid it had no right to receive it. A servant also who has received money for his master is accountable to him and to him alone for it for instance, where a farm bailiff, having (wrongfully, after he was discharged) received payment for some of his master's corn, paid the money into his private account at his bankers, it was decided that the bankers could not transfer the amount to the master's account, because the servant was accountable only to the master for the money he had received, and the bankers were accountable to the scrvant. It is also said that where the servant is in the habit of receiving money for the use of his master, and by the established course of dealing pays it over to his master from time to time, without any written vouchers passing between them, the presumption of law is that all sums so received by the servant are regularly paid over to the master. Therefore, when there has been such a course of dealing, in an action by the master against the servant for money had and received, it is not enough for the master to prove that sums have been received by the servant to his use, but he must prove, by positive evidence, that the servant has not duly accounted to him. As has been previously said, it is the servant's duty to protect his master in every respect, and in case of his death, it is the duty of every person in the house at the time to see that notice of the death is given to the registrar of deaths. CHAPTER VIÍ. MASTER'S LIABILITY ON CONTRACTS. Showing how far the master is liable upon the contracts he has THE servant is the agent of his master, on the presumption that what the servant does would be done by the master himself, were he willing and able, but that as he is not he gets others to do the work for him; consequently the servant stands with regard to other persons in the shoes of his master. The principle upon which this is so is the one we have already pointed out as the origin of the relationship between master and servant-namely, that servants are merely a matter of convenience. If a man is poor and cannot afford to keep a servant he does all his duties, household or otherwise, himself; but the richer he becomes the more persons he gets to relieve him of or assist him in those duties; but to the outside world there is no change, for the master is as liable for the acts of his servant in his service and doing his duties as he is for his own acts; nay, more, for he is sometimes liable for his servant's acts though the servant was acting contrary to his master's orders and in a way the master would not have acted. But let's to our subject. The liability of a master for his servant's acts may arise either out of the contracts that the servant has entered into on his master's behalf, or out of wrongs or injuries which the servant in the course of his employment may have committed; and as this subject is rather long we propose dividing it into two chapters, confining this chapter to the master's liability on the contracts of his servants. Every servant has power-unless under special agreement to the contrary—to contract in his master's name and on his behalf; and |