THE SEAL.]

SAINT MICHAEL AND SAINT GEORGE.

85

or an Instrument for a special purpose, under any Seal to which the authorityof the Great Seal has been imparted, is perfect and complete in itself, andcannot partake of a double character; and surely no mistake can be greater,than for an inferior Functionary to countersign a document to which theSignature of a Secretary of State has been attached. At the present time,however, the Instruments relating to the Order of Saint Michael and SaintGeorge, are, to all intents and purposes, Royal Warrants, under the OfficialSeal of the Secretary of State for the Colonial Department, and are counter-signed by him; and they are consequently neither in accordance with theLetters Patent which created, nor with the Statutes which govern the Order;and it is, to say the least, not merely a novel practice to attach to Warrantsof that description, any other Seal, or any other Signature, than those of aSecretary of State, but it is scarcely consistent with the nature, importance,and dignity of that Office.

For convenience, a smaller Seal was engraved, having the same devices,motto, and circumscription, as the Great Seal of the Order, and which was forsome years attached to Instruments executed by the Secretary at Malta; butit was not authorized by the Statutes, and is no longer used.

Cppences.

The only expences of the Order are the cost of Insignia for the Knights,and of the Badges and Habits for the Officers, which have always been paidfor by the Governments of the Ionian States and of Malta, in equal proportions,except in a recent instance, when the charges for the Insignia of the KnightsGrand Cross, appointed for their services at the blockade of Valletta, or forthe capture of the Ionian Islands, were defrayed by the Treasury.