The practice of giving white gloves to judges at maiden assizes is one
of the few relics of that symbolism so observable in the early laws of
this as of all other countries; and its origin is doubtless to be found
in the fact of the hand being, in the early Germanic law, a symbol of
power. By the hand property was delivered over or reclaimed, hand joined
in hand to strike a bargain and to celebrate espousals, &c. That this
symbolism should sometimes be transferred from the hand to the glove
(the _hand-schuh_ of the Germans) is but natural, and it is in this
transfer that we shall find the origin of the white gloves in question.
At a maiden assize no criminal has been called upon to plead, or to use
the words of Blackstone, "called upon by name to hold up his hand;" in
short, no guilty hand has been held up, and, therefore, after the rising
of the court our judges (instead of receiving, as they did in Germany,
an entertainment at which the bread, the glasses, the food, the
linen--every thing, in short--was white) have been accustomed to receive
a pair of white gloves. The Spaniards have a proverb, "_white hands
never offend_;" but in their gallantry they use it only in reference to
the softer sex; the Teutonic races, however, would seem to have embodied
the idea, and to have extended its application.