This last case suggests what is very forcibly impressed on any one who studies the cases,—­that, after all, the most important element of decision is not any technical, or even any general principle of contracts, but a consideration of the nature of the particular transaction as a practical matter.  A promises B to do a day’s work for two dollars, and B promises A to pay two dollars for a day’s work.  There the two promises cannot be performed at the same time.  The work will take all day, the payment half a minute.  How are you to decide which is to be done first, that is to say, which promise is dependent upon performance on the other side?  It is only by reference to the habits of the community and to convenience.  It is not enough to say that on the principle of equivalency a man is not presumed to intend to pay for a thing until he has it.  The work is payment for the money, as much as the [338] money for the work, and one must be paid in advance.  The question is, why, if one man is not presumed to intend to pay money until he has money’s worth, the other is presumed to intend to give money’s worth before he has money.  An answer cannot be obtained from any general theory.  The fact that employers, as a class, can be trusted for wages more safely than the employed for their labor, that the employers have had the power and have been the law-makers, or other considerations, it matters not what, have determined that the work is to be done first.  But the grounds of decision are purely practical, and can never be elicited from grammar or from logic.

A reference to practical considerations will be found to run all through the subject.  Take another instance.  The plaintiff declared on a mutual agreement between himself and the defendant that he would sell, and the defendant would buy, certain Donskoy wool, to be shipped by the plaintiff at Odessa, and delivered in England.  Among the stipulations of the contract was one, that the names of the vessels should be declared as soon as the wools were shipped.  The defence was, that the wool was bought, with the knowledge of both parties, for the purpose of reselling it in the course of the defendant’s business; that it was an article of fluctuating value, and not salable until the names of the vessels in which it was shipped should have been declared according to the contract, but that the plaintiff did not declare the names of the vessels as agreed.  The decision of the court was given by one of the greatest technical lawyers that ever lived, Baron Parke; yet he did not dream of giving any technical or merely logical reason for the decision, but, after stating in the above words the facts which were deemed material to the question [339] whether declaring the names of the vessels was a condition to the duty to accept, stated the ground of decision thus:  “Looking at the nature of the contract, and the great importance of it to the object with which the contract was entered into with the knowledge of both parties, we think it was a condition precedent.” 1