Opinion of the Court. court, were burned up in the fire at Chicago of October, 1871; that no order of the court had ever been made authorizing the filing of said copy as a substitute for the original depositions, and that no proceedings under any statute had been had for the purpose of restoring said original, but that after said fire the plaintiffs' counsel had procured said copy from the counsel of defendant, and, with his consent, had placed it on file in this cause as a copy of the original depositions. "The court thereupon overruled each of said objections to the reading of said copy of the depositions, and permitted the contents of said copy to be read in evidence, which was done; to which decision of the court the defendant then and there excepted. "The contents of said copy so read were as follows: "That said Middleton and Collard had carefully examined the signatures of Samuel N. Smallwood on said original deed purporting to be his, in three different places, and aver the said signatures to be the genuine handwriting of said Samuel N. Smallwood; and that said original deed is annexed to their depositions as Exhibit A; that they were personally acquainted with Samuel N. Smallwood in his lifetime, and knew his handwriting, having often seen him write, and they have no hesitation in declaring said signatures to be his genuine signatures." The plaintiffs also offered in evidence the deposition of William W. Corcoran, who testified that in 1847 he purchased the lands in controversy from the United States at public sale and paid the purchase money for them into the treasury of the United States, and that at the time of the purchase he had no notice of any adverse claim. The plaintiffs further read in evidence a certified copy of a commission from President Monroe, attested by Richard Rush, acting secretary of State, and the seal of the United States, dated April 30th, 1817, appointing Joseph Cassin justice of the peace in the county of Washington, in the District of Columbia, until the end of the next session of the United States Senate, and no longer; also a certified copy of a like commission, dated September 1st, 1817, appointing Samuel N. Smallwood a justice of the peace of said county until the end of said session, and no longer. Opinion of the Court. The plaintiffs also offered in evidence the deposition of Anthony Hyde, who testified that he was the business agent in Washington city of W. W. Corcoran; that he knew of the purchase of the land in question by said Corcoran in 1847, and of the payment by him of over $22,000 into the treasury of the United States for this and other lands; that from February, 1848, up to the time when his testimony was taken, February 24th, 1875, he had attended to all matters touching the tract of land in suit, such as the payment of taxes and the appointment of agents, up to the time of the conveyance thereof by Corcoran to Wm. B. Morris; that he sent the original deed from Dunbar to Prout, attached to the depositions of E. J. Middleton and George Collard, to the counsel of plaintiffs below in Chicago on October 11th, 1870; that said deed was afterwards returned to obtain a deposition of one Mrs. H. II. Boone as to Joseph Cassin's signature, and was afterwards forwarded, attached to a deposition of Mrs. Boone, to the clerk of the United States Circuit Court at Chicago on or about January 26th, 1871. Hyde further testifies that he had paid the taxes on said lands for Mr. Corcoran from 1847 to 1864, mainly through agents who lived in Illinois, but that he himself had for a year or two paid the taxes directly to the county officers. Assuming, for the present, that the evidence offered to support the deed from Dunbar to Prout was competent and properly admitted, the question is presented whether the deed itself, thus supported, was admissible. We are of opinion that it was. The existence of the original deed and its destruction in the fire at Chicago, in October, 1871, was distinctly proved by the testimony of Dent, counsel for plaintiffs. He testified that it had been sent to the counsel in Chicago of the original plaintiff in the case; that it had been offered in evidence on the first trial of the case, and had been burned with the other papers and records of the court in the fire mentioned. It was therefore competent for the plaintiffs to prove its contents. Thus, in Riggs v. Taylor, 4 Wheat. 486, this court said: "The general rule of evidence is, if a party intended to use a Opinion of the Court. deed or any other instrument in evidence, he ought to produce the original if he has it in his possession, or if the original is lost or destroyed, secondary evidence, which is the best the nature of the case allows, will in that case be admitted. The party, after proving any of these circumstances, to account for the absence of the originals, may read a counterpart, or if there is no counterpart, an examined copy, or if there should not be an examined copy, he may give parol evidence of its contents." In the present case it does not appear that there was in existence any counterpart or examined copy of the destroyed deed. The only resource left to the plaintiffs was to prove the contents of the original by a witness who knew the contents. This was done by the deposition of Dent. He testified that the original deed corresponded substantially in contents to the certified copy offered in evidence, except there was not attached to it the official certificate of the court, dated February 3d, 1875. This evidence made the copy competent for the purposes of the trial. Having thus established the fact of the original deed and its contents, the plaintiffs below were in the same position as if the original deed was in their possession and they had offered it in evidence. It remained for them to prove its execution. It has been held by the Supreme Court of Illinois, that, under the act of February 19th, 1819, for establishing a recorder's office, and which was substantially the same as the act of 1807, which was in force when the deed from Dunbar to Prout was executed, a deed is valid as between the parties to it without being acknowledged. Semple v. Miles, 2 Scammon, 315. See also McConnell v. Reed, Ib. 371. Having established by proof the fact that the deed had existed and had been destroyed, and that the copy offered in evidence was a copy of the original, it only remained to prove the signing and sealing of the deed by the grantor. As the witnesses to the deed were shown to be dead, the method pointed out by law to establish the execution of the deed was by proof of the handwriting of the witnesses to the deed. Clarke v. Courtney, 5 Pet. 319; Cooke v. Woodrow, 5 Opinion of the Court. Cranch, 13. And when there was more than one witness, proof of the handwriting of one was sufficient. 1 Greenleaf on Evidence, sec. 575; Adams v. Kerr, 1 B. and P. 360; 3 Preston on Abstracts of Title, pp. 72, 73. By the depositions of Middleton and Collard, which the court admitted in evidence, the handwriting of Samuel N. Smallwood, one of the subscribing witnesses of the deed, was fully proven. His signature also to the acknowledgment of the deed, as one of the justices of the peace before whom the acknowledgment was taken, and his signature to the jurat of an oath of identity indorsed on the deed, subscribed and sworn to before him by Dunbar, were proven by the same testimony. The genuineness of the handwriting of Smallwood as a witness to the deed was placed beyond all doubt by the depositions of these witnesses. If, therefore, the evidence by which this proof was made was competent and admissible, the execution of the deed from Dunbar to Prout was established, and the deed itself was properly admitted in evidence. We are next to consider the question whether the copies of the depositions of Middleton and Collard, by which the handwriting of Smallwood was proven, were properly admitted in evidence. This evidence was objected to by the defendant, and his objection was overruled, to which he excepted. The admission of the parties, as appears by the bill of exceptions, showed the existence of the original depositions, that they had been destroyed with the other records of the court in the fire of October, 1871, that the copies were correct copies of the original depositions, and had been furnished by counsel for defendant, and with his consent had been placed on file in the cause as correct copies of the original. The objection made to the introduction of the copies was that the death of the witnesses was not shown, nor was it proven that they were incompetent to testify, and that their depositions. could not be retaken; therefore proof of what they had testified in their depositions was not admissible. The rule invoked to exclude copies of the depositions is, that in the absence of evidence that the witness who testified in a former trial is dead or incapable of testifying, or that his deposition can Opinion of the Court. not be retaken, it is not competent to show what his testimony in the former trial was; and that when the deposition of a witness which was read upon a former trial is lost, its contents cannot be proved except after proof of the death of the witness whose testimony it contained. Cook v. Stout, 47 Ill. 530; Aulger v. Smith, 34 Ill. 530. But if the witnesses had lived in another State and more than a hundred miles distant from the place of trial, proof of the contents of their deposition would have been admissible. Burton v. Driggs, 20 Wall. 125. Therefore, to have made the objection tenable, it should have also been put upon the ground that the witnesses were not shown to reside in another State and more than a hundred miles from the place of trial. This it did not do. When a party excepts to the admission of testimony he is bound to state his objection specifically, and in a proceeding for error he is confined to the objection so taken. Burton v. Driggs, ubi supra. The original depositions were taken in the city of Washington. It is therefore probable that the witnesses resided there. If the copy of the depositions had been objected to because it was not shown that the witnesses resided out of the district, and more than a hundred miles from the place where the court was held, the plaintiffs below might have supplied proof of that fact. The objection, as it was made, was not broad enough and specific enough, and was therefore properly overruled and the evidence admitted. But we think the rule relied on by defendant to exclude copies of the deposition does not apply to the case in hand. The plaintiffs did not offer oral evidence of the contents of the depositions, but offered copies, which were admitted by counsel for defendant to be true copies. It was, therefore, not necessary to retake the depositions, or to prove the death of the witnesses or their incapacity to testify. The copy of the deposition was, by consent, substituted for the original, which was proven to have been destroyed, and being admitted to be a true copy, spoke for itself. It was, therefore, properly received in evidence.. It was further objected to the admission in evidence of the proof relating to the deed of John J. Dunbar to Prout, that as |