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 A Legal Relic. day Jeremiah attests, for he says (verse 44) that " men shall buy fields for money and subscribe evidences and seal them, and take witnesses." But Israel has not the exclusive claim to the origin of the seal, for among the re mains of Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, and all other eastern nations, seals abound. Little do we think, in the ordinary transactions of our offices, that some thousands of years hence some of them may be examined as historical curiosities. Just so when the heirs of Petepsais sold eight hundred cubits of vacant land near the city of Thebes to Neuchetes, in the reign of Cleopatra, one hundred and six years before Christ. Their sole thought doubtless was of the one talent of brass money, the consideration; but he who will may now examine the deed itself and its authenticating seal. Throughout the East every governor of a village has at this day his own private seal or signet with which he seals and authenticates his writ ings and decrees. From the East the use of the seal passed to Greece. Thence to Rome, where it was ordained that the seal be affixed to a thread drawn three times through holes perforated through the parchment. And they were held so sacred that counterfeiting them was punished by the most horrible penalty known to Roman Law. (Justinian, Inst., Lib. 4; Tit. XVIII, §7.) louring the mediaeval period, they were considered the main proof of the authen ticity of all sorts of documents, both public and private. But coming to the land from which our law directly takes its rise, it appears that among the Saxons seals were not in general use. For the Saxon, to whom the pen was generally a stranger, smeared his right hand •with ink and laid it upon the paper under the words, "Witness my hand." Then he made the sign of the holy cross in black or gold, and a great number of witnesses attested his act. (Sheppard's Touchstone, 121.)

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Then came the Norman conqueror, and legislating his own customs upon his van quished subjects, he decreed the use of the waxen seal in lieu of the manual daub and cross but not being in the least more schol arly than the Saxon, he impressed his signet on the wax and said. "Witness my seal." So the phrase, "Witness my hand and seal," under which thousands now daily write their names, meant something then, though they are but hollow words now, in the use of which we pay unconscious tribute to our noble ancestor who used this form of at testation because it was the very best he could do. And the mark of the illiterate man is the Saxon sign of the holy cross. All our modern law on this subject issues from the opinion of the greatest legal dog matist of English writers, Lord Coke, who in his third Institute established for centu ries the great common law definition of a seal, viz., "wax with an impression." ( 3 Inst. 169.) But why this history? Merely to see for what reason this custom of sealing was in troduced and revered so highly that to-day we are governed in many jurisdictions of this country by rules giving it an artificial character. It first began when king, prince, and peasant were alike illiterate. Some means of identifying their execution of doc uments must be adopted, and in the multifariousness of designs which could be im pressed on wax was their salvation; so that a seal came to be regarded as essential to a deed, while signing was not. (Sheppard's Touchstone, 121.) But great is precedent. And it has pre vailed. So when ability to write became common, the courts dared not discard the seal, and being at a loss to ascribe sensible existing reasons therefor, have invented the fiction that the affixing of this attachment gives the document a certain solemnity and tends to excite caution in the illiterate. And since it must stand for something, they have attached to it the doctrine still followed