[229] It is very true that in modern times many of the effects of either relation--master and servant or principal and agent--may be accounted for as the result of acts done by the master himself. If a man tells another to make a contract in his name, or commands him to commit a tort, no special conception is needed to explain why he is held; although even in such cases, where the intermediate party was a freeman, the conclusion was not reached until the law had become somewhat mature. But, if the title Agency deserves to stand in the law at all, it must be because some peculiar consequences are attached to the fact of the relation. If the mere power to bind a principal to an authorized contract were all, we might as well have a chapter on ink and paper as on agents. But it is not all. Even in the domain of contract, we find the striking doctrine that an undisclosed principal has the rights as well as the obligations of a known contractor,--that he can be sued, and, more remarkable, can sue on his agent's contract. The first precedent cited for the proposition that a promise to an agent may be laid as a promise to the principal, is a case of master and servant. /1/ As my present object is only to show the meaning of the doctrine of identification in its bearing upon the theory of possession, it would be out of place to consider at any length how far that doctrine must be invoked to explain the liability of principals for their agents' torts, or whether a more reasonable rule governs other cases than that applied where the actor has a tolerably defined status as a [230] servant. I allow myself a few words, because I shall not be able to return to the subject. If the liability of a master for the torts of his servant had hitherto been recognized by the courts as the decaying remnant of an obsolete institution, it would not be surprising to find it confined to the cases settled by ancient precedent. But such has not been the fact. It has been extended to new relations by analogy, /1/ It exists where the principal does not stand in the relation of paterfamilias to the actual wrong-doer. /2/ A man may be held for another where the relation was of such a transitory nature as to exclude the conception of status, as for the negligence of another person's servant momentarily acting for the defendant, or of a neighbor helping him as a volunteer; /3/ and, so far as known, no principal has ever escaped on the ground of the dignity of his agent's employment. /4/ The courts habitually speak as if the same rules applied to brokers and other agents, as to servants properly so called. /5/ Indeed, it [231] has been laid down in terms, that the liability of employers is not confined to the case of servants, /1/ although the usual cases are, of course, those of menial servants, and the like, who could not pay a large verdict.