The critical reader will not fail to note a few heraldic lapses in the arms as blazoned by the secretary of Congress, such as the omission of the tincture of the scroll, and the denominating the collection of stars a crest. By a somewhat similar error in the law by which our flag was adopted, no method of arrangement of the stars in the union is prescribed.
Notwithstanding that the great seal as adopted had an obverse and a reverse, there is nothing to show that the reverse was ever made. Why this was neglected does not appear of record. Nor does there seem to be any means of ascertaining by what authority one half of the seal is made to do duty for the whole. It is certainly not authorized by any law. Is not its use then by the State department technically illegal?
But this is not all. The seal as originally engraved was in accordance with the requirements of the law, but in 1841, Daniel Webster then being Secretary of State, a new seal was made, probably because the old one had become worn, and for some reasons not now discoverable, several alterations were made in the design. In the shield of the seal thus made, the red pales are twice the width of the white ones, so that it reads heraldically, argent, six pales gules, instead of "palewise of thirteen pieces, argent and gules," as expressed in the adopted report. In the original, too, the eagle held in his sinister talon a "bundle of thirteen arrows," but the poor bird grasps but a meagre six in the new seal. There was some significance in the former number, all of which is lost in the change. Application to the State department for the reasons for these deviations from the original seal resulted in only the following: "This change does not appear to have been authorized by law, and the cause of it is not known."
Is it possible that an arbitrary alteration can be made in the great seal of the United States by officials temporarily in charge of it? And if so, what is to prevent some future Secretary of State, with notions of his own in regard to heraldic bearings, from discarding the old seal altogether, in favor of some creation of his own? The nation was providentially saved from the artistic efforts of Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin; but what guaranty have we for the future?