But the same cannot be said of things not coming under the nature of contracts. Thus if any one should sell his corn at a high price, when he knows that many ships laden with grain are bound for that place, though it would be an act of kindness in him to communicate such intelligence to the purchasers, and though no advantage could be derived to him, from withholding the communication, but at the expence of charity, yet there is nothing unjust in it, or contrary to the general rules of dealing. The practice is vindicated by Diogenes in the passage of Cicero alluded to, he says, "I carried my commodities and offered them to sale, in selling them I demanded no greater price than others did; if the supply had been greater I would have sold them for less, and where is the wrong done to any one?" The maxim of Cicero therefore cannot generally be admitted, that, knowing a thing yourself, to wish another, whose interest it is to know it also, to remain ignorant of it, merely for the sake of your own advantage, amounts to a fraudulent concealment. By no means; for that only is a fraudulent concealment which immediately affects the nature of the contract: as for instance, in selling a house, to conceal the circumstance of its being infected with the plague, or having been ordered by public authority to be pulled down. But it is unnecessary to mention, that the person, with whom a seller treats, ought to be apprised of every circumstance attending the thing offered for sale; if it be lands, whether the tenure be subject to a rent-charge, or service of any kind, or be entirely free. X. and XI. Nor is the equality that has been explained confined solely to the communication of all the circumstances of the case to the contracting parties, but it includes also an entire freedom of consent in both.