From the two classes of cases just enumerated, it is plain that an unpaid agent is liable for gross negligence, and equally plain that he is liable for nothing less. From the latter of these propositions there is, however, as has been already stated, one exception, and it is contained in the following words of Lord Loughborough, when delivering judgment in Shields vs. Blackburne: "I agree," said his lordship, "with Sir William Jones, that when a bailee undertakes to perform a gratuitous act, from which the bailor alone is to receive benefit, then the bailee is only liable for gross negligence. But if a man gratuitously undertakes to do a thing to the best of his skill, when his situation or profession is such as to imply skill, an omission of that skill is imputable to him as gross negligence. If, in this case, a ship-broker or a clerk in the custom-house, had undertaken to enter the goods, a wrong entry would in them be gross negligence, because their situation and employment necessarily imply a competent degree of knowledge in making such entries." It perhaps may be more correct to call this a distinction engrafted on the general doctrine, than an exception from it; since it does not render any unpaid agent liable for less than gross negligence; but renders that gross negligence, in some agents, which would not be so in others.

The case of Coggs vs. Bernard derives most of its celebrity from the elaborate dissertation upon the general law of bailments delivered by Lord Holt in pronouncing judgment. His lordship, as we have seen, distributes all Bailments into the following six classes, viz.:

1. Deposition; or a naked bailment of goods, to be kept for the use of the bailor.

2. Commodatum. Where goods or chattels that are useful are lent to the bailee gratis, to be used by him.

3. Locatio rei. Where goods are lent to the bailee, to be used by him for hire.

4. Vadium. Pawn.

5. Locatio operis faciendi. Where goods are delivered to be carried, or something is to be done about them, for a reward to be paid to the bailee.

6. Mandatum. A delivery of goods to somebody, who is to carry them, or do something about them, gratis.

Sir William Jones, in his Treatise on Bailments, objects to this division; "for," says he, "in truth, his fifth tort is no more than a branch of the third, and he might with equal propriety have added a seventh, since the fifth is capable of another subdivision." The fifth of the classes enumerated by Lord Holt is, as we have seen, Locatio operis faciendi, i. e., where goods are delivered to be carried, or something is to be done about them for reward to be paid to the bailee. And this, with due submission to so great an authority as Sir William Jones, cannot be reasonably treated as a branch of the third, which is Locatio rei, i. e., where goods are lent to the bailee, to be used by him for hire; for there exists between them this essential difference, viz., that in cases falling under the third class, or locatio rei, the reward is paid by the bailee to the bailor; whereas in cases falling under the fifth class, or locatio operis faciendi, the reward is always paid by the bailor to the bailee. It is true that in Latin both classes are described by the word locatio, which probably gave rise to Sir William Jones' opinion that both ought to be included under the same head; but then in the third class, locatio rei, the word locatio is used to describe a mode of bailment, viz., by the hiring of the thing bailed; whereas in the fifth class, locatio operis faciendi, the same word locatio is used, not to describe any mode of bailment, but to signify the hiring of the man's labour who is to work upon the thing bailed, that is not hired at all, as it is in cases falling within the third class. If, indeed, Lord Holt had been enumerating the different sorts of hir-ings, not of bailments, he would no doubt, like the civilians, have classified both locatio rei and locatio operis under the word hiring, since in one case goods are hired, and in the other labour. But he was making a classification, not of hirings, but of bailments; and since in cases of locatio rei there is a hiring of the thing bailed, and in cases of locatio operis no hiring of the thing bailed, it was impossible to place, with any degree of propriety, two sorts of bailments under the same class, one of which is, and the other of which is not, a bailment by way of hiring. As to the objection that Lord Holt's fifth class of bailments is capable of another subdivision, there is no doubt but that it may be split, not only as Sir W. Jones suggests, into locatio operis faciendi, where work is to be done upon the goods, and locatio operis mercium vehendarum, where they are to be carried, but into as many different subdivisions as there are different modes of employing labour upon goods; and, in point of fact, the civilians, in their division of hirings, enumerate another class, viz., locatio custodiae, or the hiring of care to be bestowed in guarding a thing bailed, which was omitted by Sir W. Jones. For these reasons, it is submitted that Lord Holt's classification is the correct one.