SE.--Few men will venture to purchase a freehold,
or even a leasehold property, by private contract, without making
themselves acquainted with the locality, and employing a solicitor to
examine the titles,; but many do walk into an auction-room, and bid for
a property upon the representations of the auctioneer. The conditions,
whatever they are, will bind him; for by one of the legal fictions of
which we have still so many, the auctioneer, who is in reality the agent
for the vendor, becomes also the agent for the buyer, and by putting
down the names of bidders and the biddings, he binds him to whom the lot
is knocked down to the sale and the conditions,--the falling of the
auctioneer's hammer is the acceptance of the offer, which completes the
agreement to purchase. In any such transaction you can only look at the
written or printed particulars; any verbal statement of the auctioneer,
made at the time of the sale, cannot contradict them, and they are
implemented by the agreement, which the auctioneer calls on the
purchaser to sign after the sale. You should sign no such contract
without having a duplicate of it signed by the auctioneer, and delivered
to you. It is, perhaps, unnecessary to add, that no trustee or assignee
can purchase property for himself included in the trust, even at
auction; nor is it safe to pay the purchase money to an agent of the
vendor, unless he give a written authority to the agent to receive it,
besides handing over the requisite deeds and receipts.

2696. The laws of purchase and sale of property are so complicated that
Lord St. Leonards devotes five chapters of his book on Property Law to
the subject. The only circumstances strong enough to vitiate a purchase,
which has been reduced to a written contract, is proof of fraudulent
representation as to an encumbrance of which the buyer was ignorant, or
a defect in title; but every circumstance which the purchaser might have
learned by careful investigation, the law presumes that he did know.
Thus, in buying a leasehold estate or house, all the covenants of the
original lease are presumed to be known. "It is not unusual," says Lord
St. Leonards, "to stipulate, in conditions of sale of leasehold
property, that the production of a receipt for the last year's rent
shall be accepted as proof that all the lessor's covenants were
performed up to that period. Never bid for one clogged with such a
condition. There are some acts against which no relief can