772
Stanchion—Standish
proxies for voting at meetings of proprietors of joint-stock companies and receipts after a month from date. An unstamped instrument cannot be pleaded or given in evidence except in criminal proceedings or for a collateral purpose. If an instrument chargeable with duty be produced as evidence in a court, the officer whose duty it is to read the instrument is to call the attention of the judge to any omission or insufficiency of the stamp, and if the instrument is one which may legally be stamped after execution, it may, on payment of the amount of the unpaid duty and the penalty payable by law, and a further sum of £1, be received in evidence, saving all just exceptions on other grounds. The rules of the supreme court, 1883 (Ord. xxxix. r. 8, re-enacting a provision of the Common Law Procedure Act), provide that a new trial is not to be granted by reason of the ruling of a judge that the stamp upon any document is sufficient or that the document does not require a stamp. The stamp upon a document subject to the stamp laws of a foreign state is usually admissible in evidence in a court of the United Kingdom if it conform in other respects to the rules governing the admissibility of such documents, even though it be improperly stamped according to the law of the foreign country. The admissibility of documents belongs to the ordinatoria litis rather than the decisoria litis, and is governed by the lex fori rather than the lex loci contractus, unless indeed that law makes a stamp necessary to the validity of the instrument. Certain offences, such as forging a die or stamp, selling or using a forged stamp, &c., are made felonies punishable with penal servitude for life as a maximum.
United States.—The subject of stamp duties is of unusual historical interest, as the passing of Grenville’s Stamp Act of 1765 (see United States: History) directly led to the American War of Independence. The act was, indeed, repealed the next year as a matter of expediency, but an act of the same year dealing with the dependency of American colonies declared the right of the British legislature to bind the colonies by its acts. The actual yield of the stamp duties under the act of 1765 was, owing to the opposition in the American colonies, only £4000—less than the expenses of putting the act into force. The stamp duties of the United States are now under the superintendence of the commissioner of internal revenue.
Stanchion (Fr. étançon, a wooden post), an architectural term applied to the upright iron bars in windows which pass through the eyes of the saddle bars or horizontal irons to steady the lead lights. The French call the latter traverses, the stanchions montants, and the whole arrangement armature. Stanchions frequently finish with ornamental heads forged out of the iron.
Standard, a term with three main meanings: (1) an ensign or flag; (2) a fixed weight, measure, value or quality established by law or customarily recognized as a unit of comparison by which the correctness of others can be determined; (3) an upright or standing object, such as a large candelabrum, or, particularly, a fruit-tree which stands without support. With regard to the derivation, the word which appears in most European languages, e.g. Du. standaard, Ger. Standarte, O. Fr. estandart, estendard, mod. étendard, Ital. stendale, stendardo, &c., is to be referred to the Teut. standan, to stand, and refers to the fixed pole to which an object or a pole was attached. The “standard” as a military ensign was properly stationary and served as the signal of the position of its owner on the ordered field of battle. The O. Fr. form estendard points to the influence of Lat. extendere, to spread out, extend, of the flag when hung upon the pole (see further Flag for the various meanings of the word and its history). The use of the term for a recognized unit of comparison is due probably to the fact that it is something fixed or set up, stable, and not to any fanciful reference to the ensign or flag as the object to which one turns as a rallying-point. For the standard weights and measures see Weights and Measures and Standards Department below. There are many other standards, such as electrical standards (see Electricity), standard solutions in chemistry (q.v.) for the purpose of volumetric analysis, &c. In engineering, the component parts of machines or other structures are “standardized” in accordance with agreed measurements. For “standard time” see Time, Standard.
Standard, Battle of the, a name given to the battle of the 22nd of August 1138 near Northallerton, in which the Scottish army under King David was defeated by the English levies of Yorkshire and the north Midlands, who arrayed themselves round a chariot carrying the consecrated banners of St Peter of York, St John of Beverley, St Wilfrid of Ripon and St Cuthbert of Durham.
See C. Oman, Art of War: Middle Ages, pp. 389 sqq.
Standards Department, a department of the English Board of Trade, having the custody of the imperial standards of weights and measures. As far back as can be traced, the standard weights and measures, the primary instruments for determining the justness of all other weights and measures used in the United Kingdom, were kept at the exchequer, and the duties relating to these standards were imposed upon the chamberlains of the exchequer. The office of chamberlains was abolished in 1826, under the operation of 23 Geo. III. c. 82, passed in 1783, but the custody of the standards and any duties connected therewith remained attached to an officer in the exchequer (q.v.) until that department was abolished in 1866. Meanwhile, in pursuance of recommendations of Standard Commissions of 1841 and 1854 and a House of Commons Committee of 1862, the Standards of Weights, Measures and Coinage Act 1866 was passed. This act created a special department of the Board of Trade, called the “Standard Weights and Measures Department,” and a head of that department styled the “Warden of the Standards.” His duty was to conduct comparisons, verifications and operations with reference to the standards in aid of scientific research and otherwise. The first—indeed, the only real holder—of the office was Henry Williams Chisholm (1809–1901), previously chief clerk of the old exchequer, under whose direction the department was organized; and before his retirement in 1877 it embraced not merely the re-verification of the imperial standards, but the making of local standards for local authorities, the re-verification of standards and instruments for all parts of the United Kingdom and colonies, for foreign countries which did not possess standardizing departments, the verification of manufacturers’ standards and instruments, gas-measuring standards, apparatus for determining the flash-point of petroleum, &c. The Weights and Measures Act of 1878 left out all reference to the title and office of warden of the standards, and this opportunity was taken, in the words of the then permanent secretary of the Board of Trade, T. H. (afterwards Lord) Farrer, to make the office “more strictly a department of the Board of Trade.” It was put in charge of an officer (Mr H. J. Chaney) termed “Superintendent of Weights and Measures,” but on his death in 1906 an attempt was made partially to restore dignity and importance to the office by the appointment of Major P. A. MacMahon, F.R.S., with the title of “Deputy Warden of the Standards.”[1]
There are Standards departments under the charge of experienced scientists in Berlin, St Petersburg, Paris, Vienna, Rome, Madrid, Lisbon, Brussels, Bucharest and Constantinople and at Ottawa, Melbourne and Sidney. The United States Bureau of Standards is in the department of Commerce and Labor. It was established in 1901 and is under the charge of a director. Its work follows that of the English department and embraces also research in the domain of physics, extending from chemistry on the one side to engineering on the other. It also tests and investigates standards and methods of constructing measuring instruments for scientific societies, educational institutions, manufacturers and others.
Standerton, a town of the Transvaal, 114 m. S.E. of Johannesburg, on the railway from that city, via Newcastle to Durban, distant 369 m. Pop. (1904), 4589, of whom 2136 were white. Standerton is 5025 ft. above the sea and is built on the north bank of the Vaal, here spanned by two fine bridges. It is the chief town of a district of the same name and the centre of an important agricultural and pastoral region. A government stud farm is maintained here. In the neighbourhood are coal-fields. The name of the town is derived from that of the former owner of the site, an Adrian Stander, who fought against the British at Boomplaats in 1848. The town was laid out in 1870. Since 1903 it has been governed by a municipality.
STANDISH, MILES, or Myles (c. 1584-1636), American colonist, was born about 1584 in Lancashire, probably of the
- ↑ The act of 1878, which repealed the act of 1866, merely declared that the Board of Trade should have all powers and perform all duties relative to the standards vested in or imposed upon the warden of the standards by the act of 1866 or otherwise, and the title “deputy warden of the standards” is therefore a departmental creation.
