[Footnote: It is evident, that the will or consent alone never
transfers property, nor causes the obligation of a promise (for
the same reasoning extends to both), but the will must be
expressed by words or signs, in order to impose a tie upon any
man. The expression being once brought in as subservient to he
will, soon becomes the principal part of the promise; nor will a
man be less bound by his word, though he secretly give a
different direction to his intention, and withhold the assent of
his mind. But though the expression makes, on most occasions, the
whole of the promise, yet it does not always so; and one who
should make use of any expression, of which he knows not the
meaning, and which he uses without any sense of the consequences,
would not certainly be bound by it. Nay, though he know its
meaning, yet if he use it in jest only, and with such signs as
evidently show, that he has no serious intention of binding
himself, he would not lie under any obligation of performance;
but it is necessary, that the words be a perfect expression of
the will, without any contrary signs. Nay, even this we must not
carry so far as to imagine, that one, whom, by our quickness of
understanding, we conjecture, from certain signs, to have an
intention of deceiving us, is not bound by his expression or
verbal promise, if we accept of it; but must limit this
conclusion to those cases where the signs are of a different
nature from those of deceit.
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