ABSTRACT
Lord Blackburn: My Lords, in this case, the question which has now to be decided is, I believe, quite a question of fact, but part of what was said in the Court of Common Pleas would raise an important question of law if it were to be taken in a way in which it was not necessary for either Lord Coleridge or Mr Justice Brett to hold it, and in which, therefore, they both said, looking to the facts which had been found, they did not hold it. I wish to say upon that point that I cannot agree with what seems to be their view. Mr Justice Brett, referring to the case of Ex p Harris before the Lords Justices and other cases, says that, looking to all this, he has come ‘to a strong opinion that the moment one party has made a proposition of terms to another and it can be shewn by sufficient evidence that that other has accepted those terms in his own mind, then the contract is made, before that acceptance is intimated to the proposer’. And he goes on to say, applying that to the present case, that, to his mind, as soon as Burnett put the letter into his drawer, a contract was made, although none was formally entered into.
