a little different." If the words used are intelligible, a slight difference or a slight mistake will not prevent there being a contract; but where a mistake goes to the greater part of the subject-matter, it cannot be a slight mistake.

It is true that in some cases, if the party against whom specific performance is sought to be obtained, satisfies the court by clear evidence that what he on the terms of the contract appears to have contracted for was not in his mind the thing in respect of which he was bargaining, the court will refuse specific performance, but that is only because in cases of specific performance the court does not grant that special equitable relief if it finds, for any reason, that it would be called a hardship or unreasonable to compel the defendant specifically to perform the contract.

A purchaser at a judicial sale who voluntarily abstains from all effort to get correct information, and deliberately assumes the hazard of making a purchase ignorantly must, as a general rule, bear the consequences of his negligence.

The court, when appealed to in an action at law, can only consider whether there was a valid contract and a breach. The mere mistake of one party, however great, will not excuse him from making full compensation. When, however, application is made to the court, not to determine and enforce legal rights, but "to do equity" between the parties, the court will be careful to do only equity, and will not aid one party to take advantage of the mistake of the other party. Where there has been no fraud or misrepresentation, and the terms of the contract were unambiguous, so that there was no reasonable ground or excuse for a mistake, it is not sufficient, in order to resist specific performance, for a party to say that he did not understand its meaning.

[Hardship.]

Where a bargain is good at the commencement, but turns out a hard one afterwards, the court will not decree a performance.

A court of equity never grants an injunction except in cases where it would be strictly equitable to grant it.

It would be inconsistent with general practice if a court of equity carried into execution a specific covenant in all cases where the legal intention of the deed is found.

While the court determines the question of jurisdiction upon principles peculiar to itself, it cautiously abstains from deciding whether either party has a remedy at law against the other, leaving each of them to agitate that question in a court of law.

Courts of equity do not decree a specific performance of an agreement of which the consequence would be a forfeiture of a lease. But when a defendant sets up the consequence of forfeiture as a defence to a bill for specific performance, the court must be well satisfied before it admits the validity of such a defence, that forfeiture will follow from the specific performance of the agreement, and it must also look at the fact by whose acts and conduct the forfeiture would be occasioned. The court will not permit a defendant to put himself in such a position as that his performance of his agreement shall create a forfeiture, and then turn round and say that the plaintiff shall not have a specific performance of the agreement because the defendant has by his own act enabled the landlord to enter upon the agreement being performed.

When a contract follows a covenant in a lease giving the right or option to purchase the premises and is in the nature of a continuing offer to sell, it is the usual practice of courts of equity to enforce its specific execution upon the application of the party who has complied with its stipulations on his part, or has seasonably and in good faith offered and continues ready to comply with them. But it is not the invariable practice.

Specific relief will be granted when it is apparent, from a view of all the circumstances of the particular case, that it will subserve the ends of justice; and it will be withheld when, from a like view, it appears that it will produce hardship or injustice to either of the parties. It is not sufficient, to call forth the equitable interposition of the court, that the legal obligation under the contract to do the specific thing

desired may be perfect. It must also appear that the specific enforcement will work no hardship or injustice, for if that result would follow, the court will leave the parties to their remedies at law, unless the granting of the specific relief can be accompanied with conditions which will obviate that result. If that result can be thus obviated, a specific performance will generally in such cases be decreed conditionally. It is only in courts of law that literal and exact performance is required.

If the actual increase in the value of property exceeded the estimate made when a covenant allowing the lessee's election to purchase was drawn, that circumstance furnishes no grounds for the court's interference with the arrangement of the parties. The question in such cases always is, Was the contract at the time it was made a reasonable and fair one? If such were the fact, the parties are considered as having taken upon themselves the risk of subsequent fluctuations in the value of the property, and such fluctuations are not allowed to prevent its specific enforcement.

The owners of partial interests in contracts for land, acquired subsequent to their execution, are not necessary parties to bills for their enforcement. The original parties on one side are not to be mixed up in controversies between the parties on the other side, in which they have no concern. The general rule is, that the parties to the contract are the only proper parties to the suit for its performance, and, except in the case of an assignment of the entire contract, there must be some special circumstance to authorize a departure from the rule. It is obvious that persons, strangers to the contract, and, therefore, neither entitled to the rights nor subject to the liabilities which arise out of it, are as much strangers to a proceeding to enforce the execution of it as they are to a proceeding to recover damages for the breach of it.

When parties have reduced their contracts to writing, conversations controlling or changing their stipulations are, in the absence of fraud, no more received in a court of equity than in a court of law.

Though a contract was fair and just when made, the interference of the court will be denied, if subsequent events have made performance by the defendant so onerous, that its enforcement would impose great hardship upon him, and cause little or no benefit to the plaintiff. That would be the case when there had been such a change in the character of a neighborhood as to defeat the object and purpose of a restrictive agreement concerning the use of property.

Justice Harlan of the Supreme Court of the United States in a decision rendered May 16, 1892, after a "reasonable interpretation" of a contract for the lease of a wire between New York City and Philadelphia, at $600 per annum, said in part:

It is true that in many adjudged cases, and by numerous text-writers, the general rule is laid down that equity in the exercise of a sound judicial discretion will refuse a decree for specific performance where it would be a great hardship upon one of the parties to grant relief of that character. But this general rule is subject, in its application, to some limitations that arise out of the facts of particular cases.

Conceding that excess of price was an ingredient which, associated with others, will contribute to prevent the interference of a court of equity, Chief Justice Marshall said:

The value of real property had fallen. Its future fluctuation was matter of speculation. At any rate, this excess of price over value, if the contract be free from imposition, is not in itself sufficient to prevent a decree for specific performance.

Justice Strong in one of his decisions said:

It is by no means clear that a court of equity will refuse to decree the specific performance of a contract, fair when it was made, but which has become a hard one by the force of subsequent circumstances or changing events. These principles must be applicable to contracts that do not look to complete performance within a defined or reasonable time, but contemplate a continuous performance, extending through an indefinite number of years, or perpetually.

A court of equity does not affect to weigh the actual value, nor to insist upon an equivalent in contracts, where each party has equal competence. When undue advantage is taken, it will not enforce the contract; but it cannot listen to

one party saying that another man would give him more money or better terms than he agreed to take. It may be an improvident contract; but improvidence or inadequacy do not determine a court of equity against decreeing specific performance.

An unconscionable price, a clouded title, any circumstances of over-reaching, misrepresentation, suppression of the truth, suggestion of the false, fraud of any kind, breach of confidential relation and many other similar causes will induce the court to refuse specific performance.

Affirming the action of the court below which refused to decree specific performance, Justice Green of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania (January Term, 1893) stated that he did not think it would be equitable to force upon any purchaser a title to seventy acres of land, at a price of fifty thousand dollars, when the supposed presence of a large body of coal which had in fact been removed was the chief inducing cause of the contract. He added:

We do not discuss or decide the question whether the contract was within the legal competency of Mrs. Lamb, because it is not necessary, but we do think it proper to give some consideration to her state and condition as being a married woman, in determining whether or not a decree for specific performance should be made against her. The very recent emancipation of married women from the disabilities formerly incident to their relation does not remove them from consideration by the courts, when questions of improvidence, hardship and oppression, in contracts made by them, require judicial attention. In so far as these circumstances are recognized as occasions for intervention, they will be availed of, in favor of married women as well as of all other persons, with the added consideration of their less protected and, comparatively speaking, more helpless condition.

Refusing to restrain Camille D'Arville, the prima-donna from performing or singing at any theatre or place of amusement in the United States or Canada, except under the management of Edward E. Rice, the plaintiff, Justice Lathrop, of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, in January, 1895, said:

We are not disposed to enforce a negative covenant where, if the court had the power, it would not enforce an affirmative covenant. Suppose