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[70] “That I be not1 deceived and defrauded through you and my confidence in you”! How precious are these: “As between honest people there ought to be honest dealing, and no deception”! But who are “honest people,” and what is “honest dealing” —these are serious questions.

It was Quintus Scaevola, the pontifex maximus, who used to attach the greatest importance to all questions of arbitration to which the formula was appended “as good faith requires”; and he held that the expression “good faith” had a very extensive application, for it was employed in trusteeships and partnerships, in trusts and commissions, in buying and selling, in hiring and letting—in a word, in all the transactions on which the social relations of daily life depend; in these, he said, it required a judge of great ability to decide the extent of each individual's obligation to the other, especially when counter-claims were admissible in most cases.

1 “Good faith” in performance of contracts.

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