Looked upon with Veneration. of office as Lord High Chancellor, he brought forward and carried through the Judicature Act of 1873, by which Great Britain aban doned that system of pleading and procedure which had been the growth of a thousand years, and substituted for it substantially those methods which had been previously adopted and approved in so many of our American States. He received the honorary degree of D.C.L. from the University of Oxford in 1863, and was elected Lord Rector of the University of St. Andrew's in November, 1877. He has appeared as a writer on religious subjects, having edited " The Book of Praise from the best English Hymn Writers," in 1862, and
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published " Notes on some Passages in the Liturgical History of the Reformed English Church," in 1878. With respect to his high reputation for all the domestic virtues, an anecdote is ex tant which speaks volumes. A predecessor on the woolsack, Lord Westbury, better known for legal erudition and a caustic tongue than for exaggerated saintliness, was told, on the occasion of Lord Selborne's appointment, that his motto was Paltna virtuti. " I suppose," h« lisped out, " that that means 'the palm to Palmer.' It is very appropriate. I have always considered that his character was unredeemed by a single vice!'
LOOKED UPON WITH VENERATION. SINCE the days when a seal was looked upon with some such veneration as the heathen look upon their idols, the supersti tion has been growing very shadowy. The law moves much like the gods of Homer, an interval of ages between the steps; and to the layman, unversed in its wonderful mysteries, the legal effect of a seal can hardly fail to seem less than a miracle. The simple wax wafer must appear to him like "some amulet of gems annealed in upper fires." Why it should have the consecrating influence the law imputes to it, he will never be able to understand, and even lawyers are beginning to wonder if after all they themselves ever understood it. "The phrase ' hand and seal,' " said one of Philadelphia's most learned jurists, "is a lawyer's phrase, useless and obsolete, but the old fellows cannot forget it. Educated per sons sign their names; ignorant people, as the Indians, seal papers. Hence educated people never use seals to indicate their acts nowadays." The times of the earliest use of seals by the English speaking people were those of
gross ignorance, and their use was by a grossly ignorant people who could handle the sword, but knew not how to use the pen. They were then of significance when each one had his particular signet. Now that person is an exception who knows not how to write; but under the lead of the lawyers in a matter which has only a legal aspect, this people is not yet equal to the task of freeing itself en tirely from a venerable superstition. How ever, it has made the observance of it as easy and meaningless as possible. In no State of the United States is the old common law ceremony of " impressing upon wax " re quired. Most of them require only a scroll or any written or printed device which shows the intention of the signer to have been to invest the instrument with the importance of a sealed instrument. In many States the mere dash of a pen after a signature has been held by the Su preme Court to be sufficient sealing. In contrast with this is the very recent decision of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in an opinion delivered by Justice Mitchell, that the absence of this scratch or a scroll is fatal,
