FOURTHLY, there was apparently another great blot pointed out by the lawyers. Immediately after the above-mentioned _testing clause_, followed the words "_Gratis._--PER SIGNETUM."[31] Now, it has been seen that the testing clause is the conclusion of only a _completed Charter_. This "excerpt," therefore, if taken from any document, must have been taken from a completed Charter. It could not have been taken from the Signature, nor the Signet Precept, nor the Privy Seal Precept, for in none of these instruments could such a clause appear. But in addition to this testing clause, appear the words "_Per Signetum!_" which are never to be found in any charter at all, but only in the Privy Seal Precept! So that here was a document containing, on the one hand, words (the testing clause) which are to be found in only a completed charter, and which could not exist in a Privy Seal Precept; and, on the other hand, certain other words (_Per Signetum_) never to be found in a completed charter, but only in a Privy Seal Precept! It was accordingly sworn unhesitatingly by all the professional witnesses, even on the strength of these conclusive elements of intrinsic evidence alone, that the document before the Court _could not be_ an excerpt, or copy, of any authentic writ of any description whatever, known in the law of Scotland. There seems some little force in the Solicitor-General's observation on this part of the case: "Gentlemen, is there not here, then, the clearest and most satisfactory evidence that this is not, and cannot be, an excerpt from any real or genuine document? There is an incongruity about it, which shows it could not have been copied from any document that ever existed. The writer of it--whoever he was--may have had a sort of glimmering of what it ought to have been; but still, in his ignorance, he has made a monster of it. It is utterly impossible, looking merely to the intrinsic evidence, that it could be the document which it professes to be." [31] When the precept issues in favour of a Writer to the Signet, or of the Keeper of the Signet, (as Lord Stirling then was,) the precept passes the signet _gratis_: and that word is written at the bottom.--Swinton, p. 84.