Daily Kennebec journal., 1911-03-15

a signature. At the present time it has
become merely a form. AS one gem
tleman before the judiciary committee
stated. it had become a legal fiction
suppose he used the words inadyertent-
ly. but he inadvertently told the truth
as people do sometimes. Now it seems
useless at this time to require anything
OF that kind TO continue further as a
part of our common law. for as l un-
derStand it there is no written statute
that requires it: and a great many OF
the legal fraternity. l am informed by
them directly, are in favor of it's aboli-
ton. I will say further that it is gen.
orally taken for granted that a person
signing documeDt notices whether
there is Il seal on there or not, hut in
some cases. it was brought out before
the committee, it was proved. that the
party at least denied that the seal was
on there when he made his signature,
although of course he might haV" de-
MED that anyway, but it Is customary
think for lawyers in making out pa
pers to stick on this seal when they
make the papers, and it signifies no
more than il would to stick on any
other kind of paper or to make blot
of ink. In fact in many states some
thing of that kind serves equally we'll
and these have been abolished in a
great many states of this Union, per-
haps one third of them, and / think
it is time that Maine moved along in
that direction. If there are those OF
the fraternity who still stick to the
use of the seal and wish to see that
little red sticker on their documents,
suggest that we might enact Il law
that all papers shall contain certain
amount of them ana they could be
used i'll their offices.
Mr.. WILLIAMSON OF Augusta: Mr..
Speaker. l will not take UP a great deal
of the time of the House in this mat
ter. This bill came before the judiciary
committee and was very fully Consid-
cred by that committee and the COM
mittec voted unanimously that it would
not be wise at the present time to
make the change which is advocated
by the gentleman from Lisbon 1t is
true that "a large number Of states.
don't remember exactly how many, do
not now use the seal upon their in
struments. The reason for that is
idi 6NlH ttIS. ouI sStdtt. lpStlUtT Will
the other New England states, are all
practicing under what is known As the
common law procedure. We do busi-
ness under the law of the land except
so far as it is modified by statute. A
great many of the Western states have
had all their laws codified and put in
to statute law. and many of those
states practice under code as it is
called and do not use a seal Now a
seal has a well known significance in
matters of contract. Under that sig
nificance the law has grown up rcla
tive to sealed instruments, and should
we now abolish the seals 1T might lead
to great confusion with reference to
we'll settled principles of law. OF
course if we were going to make a new
world, to make order out of chaos
there are a great many things that We
might perhaps better. We might per-
hapS abolish the system of measure
ments and we might have a metric
system. We might abolish the system
of weights, we might make a decree
that all physicians in their prescrip-
tions should weigh out everything by
drains or by the metric system of kilo-
but according to the metric system
but probably it would not be advisable
Now the committee considered the
matter with a great deal of care, gave
quite a long hearing to it. it was OPP
posed by such lawyers as Judge
s'tearhs of Bangor and by several
others who were present, and was ad-
vocated think by the gentleman from
Lisbon: and on the whole the commit
tee decided not to make this change al
the present time.
Mr.. TRAFTON of Fort Fairfield: Mr.
Speaker. it seems to me if we should
pass this law to abolish seals it would
become necessary to codify our laws
to a greater or less extent, and GER
tainly that is a matter we do not want
to consider at this time. We have
neither the time nor the opportunity to
do it, and in my opinion it would be