Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 20.djvu/788

* WRIT. G72 WRITING. cases, of delivering him therefrom. In general, the writ is issued in two classes of cases: first, ■where a person is detained without legal process ; and second, where a person is held under form of legal process or proceedings, in order to test the validity thereof. The sole purpose of the writ in these eases is to have a competent court pass upon the question of whether the prisoner is law- fully detained. This does not involve a trial of the "charges under which a person is held, but merely a determination whether the provisions of the law in regard to the arrest and detention of citizens have been complied with. In some States, the writ of habeas corpus ad testifican- diim is employed to secure the presence of a wit- ness who may be lawfully detained in prison ; or in some other restraint which may prevent his attendance. Other variations of the writ are the habeas corpus ad deliberandum et recipiendum, to remove for trial a person confined in one county to another where the offense charged was committed; habeas corpus ad satisfaciendum, to bring a person from one court to another and there hold him subject to an execution under a judgment obtained in the latter. The writ is usually obtained by a motion to a judge sitting as a court or at chambers, based upon a petition under oath or an atiklavit de- scribing the person in prison, the person detain- ing him, and such facts in regard to the deten- tion as the affiant has knowledge of. A Tit may be issued and served on Sunday in most States, but usually cannot be made returnable on that day. Statutes relating to this remedy usually prescribe a penalty against a judge who refuses to grant the writ in the proper cases. Consult: Pollock and Maitland, Histori/ of the English Law (2d ed., Boston, 1899) ; Hurd. On the Right of Personal Liberty and on The Writ of Habeas Corpus (Albany, 1858; 2d ed. 1870); Hallara, Constitutional History (New York. 1872) ; Black- stone, Commentaries on the Laws of England; and the writings of Story, Rawle, and Pomeroy on the United States Constitution; also see Forms OF Action. WRITER. A term vaguely applied in Scot- land to a law practitioner or his clerk; in provincial towns more definitely to a law agent practicing before the sheriff, and acting as fac- tor in the management of private affairs. WRITERS' CRAMP. Sec Necrosis. WRITERS TO THE SIGNET. An incor- porated Scottish law society of great antiquity. The signet is the royal seal employed for au- thenticating writs or warrants connected with the ailniinistration of justice, and it is probable that the phrase 'writers to the signet' was orig- inally employed to describe the clerks in the office of the Secretary of State upon whom the duty devolved of issiiing such writs. However this may be, we find tills important duty, from an early period of Scottish history, exercised and monopolized by an exclusive society of legal prac- titioners, who, though performing a pnlilic func- tion, were not sidiject to public appointment, but regulated admissions to their own ranks by rules of their own framing. Besides possess- ing this exclusive right to issue such writs ns required authentication by the signet, which gave them a certain monopoly of litigation, writers to the signet thus came, in the course of time, to assume very much the place and to perform the functions of the Inns of Court in England, that, namely, of regulating admissions to the bar. While, however, they still retain a certain preeminence at the Scottish bar. not un- like that formerly enjoyed by serjeants-at-law in the sister country, their monopoly of litigation has been destroyed by modern legislation (36 and 37 Vict., ch. 63). See Barrister; Lawyer; Solicitor. WRITING. The art of fixing thoughts in a visible and lasting shape, so as to make them intelligible to others and capable of preservation. This may be done in many ways which, however, in general fall into two great classes: picture- writing, where the actual picture or symbol de- notes the object or idea as a whole, and phonetic writing, where the characters employed denote the spoken word or the elements contained therein, either syllables or single sounds, such as vowels and consonants. The phonetic signs are usually believed to have been developed from the more primitive pictographie methods. In the widest sense of the term various mnemonic systems might be described as writing, but com- monly the terra is restricted to markings upon some more or less durable surface. It is, how- ever, rather to the picture that we must look for the origin of the complicated systems which lie at the basis of all human progress into a higher and more complex civilization. In its most primitive form picture-writing is merely a representation of an object or group of ob- jects, which almost of necessity tells its own story. Even here it is not long before a certain degree of symbolism or at any rate conventional- ity is introduced, and it becomes somewhat diffi- cult for the stranger to interpret the series of pictures. Interesting examjiles of the conven- tionalized forms are to be found among the In- dians and also in Polynesia, and it is possible that in them lies the key to some of the curious signs and devices which decorate the seals of Jlycenaean Crete. Such pictures, are, however, at best limited in scope, and are usually but condensed means of expression. The pictures lend more and more to become ideograms, i.e. symbols with a conventionalized meaning, as when an arrow stands for an enemy. Here we have obviously a form of writing intelligilile only to the instructed. Naturally the pictures also tend to become con- ventional rather than natural, and this trans- formation becomes ver.v rapid when- for carving on stone writing with a brush or pen on soft ma- terial becomes common. Many of the Chinese characters are good examples of ancient ]ncture3 modified bv a cursive script. Even the ideogram, however, does not suffice and we therefore ad- vance to the further step where the picture or character derived from it suggests a sound r;ither tlian an object: thus tlic picture of an rgc would denote I, etc. In a monnsyllaliic langiiage. like riiinese, the same sound may h:ive many mean- ings, as the sound ege in English in the example aliove quoted, and therefore to the phonogram may be joined an ideogram to indicate the sense in which the sound is used. Passing now to the methods of writing in vogue in the great civilizations of the ancient world, we find in Egypt the elaborate pictorial system known as hirroglgphics (q.v, ). This system might almost serve alone as an example of the