The Great Seal. one side of the seal to Lord Chelmsford, his predecessor in office and his political opponent. The second Great Seal was in use from January 23, 1860, to August 14, 1878, and its design was identical with that of the first seal. Lord Cairns took the pieces, and presented one side to the Earl of Selborne, his immediate predecessor in office. The third Great Seal of Queen Victoria is identical with the two others,
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to any document purporting to be under the Great Seal, as having been duly sealed with it by the authority of the Sovereign. To counterfeit the Great Seal is high treason. In Part I. I gave some account of the uses to which the Great (silver) Seal is now put, since the passing of the Crown Office Act of 1877, and of the extent to which the Wafer Great Seal [for picture see Part I.] has, since 1877, taken the place of the larger
No. 24. Wax Seal. Obverse.
no alteration in the design of any of Victoria's seals having been made; it is shown in No. 23 [and in No. 1 of my last article], and it came into use on August 14, 1878. This Great Seal cost £500 to £600, and a year and nine months were spent on engraving it; the seal is made of silver, and weighs sixty ounces.. It is the emblem of sovereignty — the elavis regni — the only instrument by which, on solemn occasions, the will of the Queen can be ex pressed. Absolute faith is universally given
silver seal. Documents that had to pass under the Great Seal had become so numer ous that the actual sealing process with wax was found too cumbersome : four hundred weights of wax were used in a month for sealing the various patents, etc.! A ton of sealing-wax used in five months meant much laborious work for the official sealer, and, moreover, the wax seals attached to the documents were very heavy and clumsy — see Nos. 24 and 25, where I show a reduced picture of a wax seal in my possession.
