BLACK LEAD.

201

So gaining in the lottery, stock-jobbing, gaming on ships’policy, or lives; trading against the laws of the East IndiaCompany ; the purchase of a vote, or bribery at an elec-tion; a stipulation to a sheriff, for ease and favour, or acontract in consideration for signing a bankrupt’s certificate,are all declared illegal by several specific statutes.

A hill of exchange, being in its nature a letter ofrequest from the maker to a third person in favour of asecond, must be properly addressed to that, person. Poth.pi. 35. Beawes, pi. 3. Mar. 143. The Dutch and Italians write the address on the back of a bill; but the French , inall cases, and the English in case of an inland bill, sub-scribe the direction in the form to which this paragraphrefers.

Place where payment is to be made should be fullyexpressed in the subscription, or body of the bill; Mar.107, 8. If a bill be drawn upon a person not being at theplace where the drawer intends the bill is to be payable, theplace where the drawee resides, as well as the place wherethe drawer resides, and the place where payment is to bemade, are to be expressed.

BLACK LEAD.

The period when this semi-metallic substance was intro-duced, for the purposes to which it is now applied, cannotwith certainty be ascertained, as no record is found of thetransaction: by the common expedient of inference, how-ever, we certainly may conclude it was in very remote ages.For transcribers of MSS. upwards of 1000 years ago, useda substance somewhat resembling it in effect; although, weconfess, the probability that those lines of theirs being writ-*ten on skin, might, perhaps, require a substance somewhatharder, therefore they might have had recourse to commonlead; and also, because that substance might be used withas severe a pressure, as the impressions left by the instru-ment in ruling appears to have sometimes made. Likewise,also, then we may conceive the strength necessary to beused, bore some resemblance to that which they exerted inthe use of the stylus, an iron or steel instrument, whichthey had to write upon their tablets, or thin plates of wood,ivory, or some such substance, and covered with wax. Thisinstrument was made pointed at one end, and flat andsmooth at the other: hence, we understand the text ofHorace, when be speaks of “ the frequent necessity for an