Out of this divergence in point of view and practice have of course grown other differences. One thing is that the American courts have necessarily come to adopt more liberal views in the interpretation of contracts than the English; they are to a greater extent inclined to look more to the intent than to the letter and to attach more weight to verbal evidence in eliciting what the intent was. No stamping of documents being necessary in America, the documents calling themselves contracts, and which are upheld as such, which appear in American courts are frequently of a remarkable description; but I have a suspicion that on the whole the American, in this particular, comes as near to getting justice on the average as does the Englishman. And the point is that I believe it to be inevitable that the habit of doing without lawyers in the daily conduct of business, the habit of relying on oneself and dealing with another man direct, must in the long run breed a higher standard of individual business integrity. Englishmen, relying always on their solicitors' advice, are too tempted to consider that so long as they are on the right side of the law they are honest. It is a shifting of the responsibility to the chaperon; whereas, if alone, you would be compelled to act on your honour. What I think and hope is the last word that I have to say on this rather difficult subject has to do with the matter already mentioned, namely the absence of the necessity of stamping documents in America. Englishmen will remember that the Americans always have evinced a dislike of stamps and stamp duties and acts relating thereto. Of late years the necessity of meeting the expenses of the Spanish war did for a while compel the raising of additional internal revenue by means of documentary and other stamps. The people submitted to it, but they hated it; and hated it afresh as often as they drew or saw a cheque with the two-cent stamp upon it. The act was repealed as speedily as possible and the stamping of papers has for six years now been unknown. I think--and I am not now stating any acknowledged fact, but only appealing to the reader's common-sense--that it is again inevitable that where a superior sanctity attaches to stamped paper a people must in the long run come to think too lightly of that which is unstamped. I do not say that the individual Englishman has as yet come to think too lightly of his word or bond because it is informal, but I do think there is danger of it. The words "Can we hold him?" or (what is infinitely worse) "Can he hold us?" spring somewhat readily to the lips of the business man of this generation in England.