Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIV.djvu/762

 736 SEAL ENGRAVING SEAMAN lished till near the middle of the 13th centu- ry. In Scotland, a statute of the time of Rob- ert III. (1390-1406) declared that every baron or tenant in capita of the king must have a peculiar seal for his sovereign's service ; and a statute apparently in aid of this one, passed in the next reign (James I.), enacts that every freeholder shall appear at the lord's court with his seals, or if he cannot appear in per- son, he shall send them by his attorney ; and it seems to have been customary for gentle- men at this time to deposit copies of their seals in the office of the court of their county, the seal then sufficing without signature to authenticate an instrument. In 1540 a statute of James V. declared that, inasmuch as seals might be lost or counterfeited, all documents must henceforth be not only sealed but sub- scribed. From the universal use of seals in England it came to be English law that no charter, grant, or other instrument of convey- ance was fiii-tnin, that is, done, or in other phrase a deed, until it was sealed ; and such was the virtue of a seal that down to the time of Charles II. it alone sufficed to make a wri- ting valid and binding. The statute 29 Charles II., the so-called statute of frauds, enacted that certain writings should for the future be signed ; but it is probably the better opinion that, even since the statute, a deed duly sealed is good without the subscription of a name. The old common law definition of a seal is that given by Lord Coke : Sigillum est ctra impretsa " A seal is an impression in wax ;" but it has long been held that a wafer or other tenacious substance, on which an impression is or may be made, is a good seal. In many, perhaps indeed most of the United States, neither wax, wafer, nor any other substance is required; a scroll or ring made with the pen in imitation of the seal, or as marking its place, being sufficient. One piece of wax suf- fices for several signers if stamped with their separate impressions, or several signers may adopt one seal ; and an adoption of this sort is inferred when the deed recites the sealing "with our seals," and those who did not in fact seal do yet sign and deliver the deed. The significance of the seal in law at present is, that it imports a deliberate and considered act on the part of him who affixes it. The rule has established itself firmly in the law, that an instrument thus executed with a seal implies a consideration, or in other words that full as- sent which is essential to the validity of every contract, and which can be inferred only from a seal, or from something of value passing be- tween the parties as the cause of the contract. SEAL ENGRAVING. See GEM, vol. vii., p. 663. SEA LEOPARD. See SEAL. SEAL FISHERY. See SEAL. SEA LION. See SEAL. SEALSFIELD, Charles, a German author, whose real name was KARL POSTEL, born at Poppitz, Moravia, March 8, 1793, died near Solothurn, Switzerland, May 26, 1864. He became secre- tary of a religious order at Prague, but escaped from his convent about 1822, and in 1832 set- tled in a farm house at Solothurn, both be- fore and after which time he resided much in the United States, and visited Mexico and Central America. II is principal works are: "Tokeah, or the White Rose" (2 vols., Phila- delphia, 1828; in German under the title Der Legitime und der Republikaner, 8 vols., Zu- rich, 1833); Trantatlantitche Reiseskizzen (2 vols., 1838) ; Der Virey und die ArMokraten, a Mexican novel (2 vols., 1884); Lelentbilder au beiden Hemitphdren (2 vols., 1834; 2d cd., entitled Morton, oder die groue Tour, 1846) ; and Siiden und Norden (8 vols., 1842-'3). These and others of his works have been translated into English, and several of them into French. Two complete editions have been published at Stuttgart (15 vols., 1845-7, and 18 vols., 1846). See Erinnerungen an Seahfield, by Kertb6ny (Brussels and Leipsic, 1864). A monument to him was erected in 1875 in his native place. SEAMAN, a sailor. Seamen may be hired in four ways. 1. They may be employed for a certain voyage and receive a certain proportion of the freight earned. This contract is prob- ably rarely made in this country, except for small coasting vessels. 2. They may be hired for a certain voyage or by the run, and paid a round sum at the close, and this is not very unusual. 8. They may be hired on shares, which is a practice nearly if not quite con- fined to whaling and fishing vessels. 4. But much the most common nsage is to hire them for some definite voyage or voyages, or for a definite period, on monthly wages. Under penalty of a considerable forfeiture, the Uni- ted States laws require that every master of a vessel bound from a port in the United States to any foreign port, or of any ship or vessel of the burden of 75 tons or upward bound from an Atlantic to a Pacific port or vice reran, shall have shipping articles, which must be signed by every seaman on board, and must describe accurately the voyage and the terms upon which the seaman ships. Articles which are less particular are required in case of vessels of 50 tons and upward bound from a port in one state to a port in any other than an adjoin- ing state. Wherever there is doubt as to the meaning of the obligation, the sailor, rather than the ship owner, has the benefit of the doubt. The shipping articles ought therefore to declare explicitly the ports of the beginning and end of the voyage, and in all other respects ought to be clear and fair. To all clauses or stipulations which tend to lessen the usual rights of the seaman, it must appear that he gave intelligent and deliberate assent. Acci- dental omissions in the articles may be supplied by parol; and a seaman may also by parol show that the voyage or time represented to him was not that which appears in the papers, or that the articles have been altered since they were subscribed. The owner is bound to