Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Transmitted to Congress with the Annual Message of the President, December 2, 1872, Part II, Volume V

*No. 49.[56]

[1825]

Paley’s Works, edition of 1825, vol. iv, page 85.

II. In what sense promises are to be interpreted.

Where the terms of promise admit of more senses than one, the promise is to be performed “in that sense in which the promiser apprehended at the time that the promisee received it.”Ambiguity no escape from the proper sense of a promise.

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This will not differ from the actual intention of the promiser, where the promise is given without collusion or reserve; but we put the rule in the above form, to exclude evasion in cases in which the popular meaning of a phrase, and the strict grammatical signification of the words, differ; or, in general, wherever the promiser attempts to make his escape through some ambiguity in the expressions which he used.

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