282 THE ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN 



to a warranty of soundness ; but wlien that came to 

 be sifted, it was found to be so loose and unsatisfac- 

 tory a ground of decision, that Lord Mansfield re- 

 jected it, and said that there must either be an ex- 

 press warranty of soundness, or fraud in the seller, in 

 order to maintain the action ; and Mr. J. Lawrence 

 observes, '' In 1 Rolls' Abridgement, p. 90, it is said 

 that if a merchant sell cloth to another, knowing it 

 to be badly fulled, an action on the case, in nature of 

 deceit, lies against him, because it is a warranty in 

 law. But there is no authority stated to show that 

 the same rule holds, if the commodity sold have a 

 latent defect not known to the seller ; so again the 

 case is there put, if a man sell me a horse with a 

 secret malady, without warranting it to be sound, he 

 is not liable ; that is, if there be no fraud. The in- 

 stances are familiar in the case of horses. It is 

 known that they have secret maladies which cannot 

 be discovered by the usual trials and inspection of 

 the horse — therefore the buyer requires a warranty 

 of soundness in order to guard against such latent 

 defects. Then how is this case different from the 

 sale of a horse, where it is admitted that the buyer 

 must stand to all such latent defects ?" 



