It is now time to analyze the nature of a promise, which is the second and most conspicuous element in a simple contract.  The Indian Contract Act, 1872, Section 2,8 says:—­

“(a.) When one person signifies to another his willingness [298] to do or to abstain from doing anything, with a view to obtaining the assent of that other to such act or abstinence, he is said to make a proposal: 

“(b.) When the person to whom the proposal is made signifies his assent thereto, the proposal is said to be accepted.  A proposal when accepted becomes a promise.”

According to this definition the scope of promises is confined to conduct on the part of the promisor.  If this only meant that the promisor alone must bear the legal burden which his promise may create, it would be true.  But this is not the meaning.  For the definition is of a promise, not of a legally binding promise.  We are not seeking for the legal effects of a contract, but for the possible contents of a promise which the law may or may not enforce.  We must therefore only consider the question what can possibly be promised in a legal sense, not what will be the secondary consequence of a promise binding, but not performed.

An assurance that it shall rain to-morrow, 1 or that a third person shall paint a picture, may as well be a promise as one that the promisee shall receive from some source one hundred bales of cotton, or that the promisor will pay the promisee one hundred dollars.  What is the difference in the cases?  It is only in the degree of power possessed by the promisor over the event.  He has none in the first case.  He has equally little legal authority to make a man paint a picture, although he may have larger means of persuasion.  He probably will be able to make sure that the promisee has the cotton.  Being a rich man, he is certain [299] to be able to pay the one hundred dollars, except in the event of some most improbable accident.

But the law does not inquire, as a general thing, how far the accomplishment of an assurance touching the future is within the power of the promisor.  In the moral world it may be that the obligation of a promise is confined to what lies within reach of the will of the promisor (except so far as the limit is unknown on one side, and misrepresented on the other).  But unless some consideration of public policy intervenes, I take it that a man may bind himself at law that any future event shall happen.  He can therefore promise it in a legal sense.  It may be said that when a man covenants that it shall rain to-morrow, or that A shall paint a picture, he only says, in a short form, I will pay if it does not rain, or if A does not paint a picture.  But that is not necessarily so.  A promise could easily be framed which would be broken by the happening of fair weather, or by A not painting.  A promise, then, is simply an accepted assurance that a certain event or state of things shall come to pass.