Clause 4 (Application to Self)

Clause 4 (Application to Self) is the fourth clause of the Third Concordance and the provision by which any Concordance, annex, or subordinate instrument is held to bind the office that issued it. It is the shortest clause in the Third Concordance — eleven words in the received recension — and the most litigated. Where Concordantal Self-Application describes the general principle that Tower governance applies its own instruments to itself, Clause 4 is the mechanism; where Clause Omega-1 extends that mechanism to interpretive bodies, Clause 4 names the originating office as the first party bound.

The clause entered the Concordance in the recension of the ninth winter and has been amended four times without any amendment being struck through in the working copies held by the Wing of Recursive Application. Clerks are instructed to consult the most recent amendment and the original, and to reconcile them if possible.

Text and received readings

In the Hall of Received Text the clause is displayed under glass in the form:

"What is written here applies also to those who wrote it."

— Third Concordance, Clause 4, received recension

The brevity is not accidental. The drafting committee's minutes, preserved as Folio 4-B, record that a longer form was proposed and withdrawn after a single morning's debate on the ground that "a clause about self-application should not require a second clause to explain it." This remark is itself cited in the margin of the minutes by a later hand, and the marginal citation is now the subject of an ongoing inquiry by the Office of Marginal Authority.

Two readings are in general use. The narrow reading, maintained by the Scriptorium of the Fourth Stair, holds that the clause binds only the signatories of the Third Concordance in their capacity as signatories, and says nothing about the conduct of offices created afterwards. The broad reading, maintained by the Wing of Recursive Application, holds that the clause binds every office that derives authority from the Concordance, since such an office, in issuing any instrument, is writing "here."

The Bindery dispute

The broad reading acquired its canonical illustration in the matter of the Bindery of the Lower Annexes, which in the forty-first year issued a schedule of fines for late return of bound folios. The schedule set a penalty of three quarter-marks per day. The Bindery's own returns ran late that season by an average of nine days, and the Treasury of Fines assessed the Bindery accordingly, citing Clause 4. The Bindery objected that a schedule of fines is an internal instrument and the Bindery is not "those who wrote it" with respect to its own rules.

The Court of First Concordance found for the Treasury in a judgment of two paragraphs, the second of which has become a standard citation:

"The Bindery wrote the schedule. The schedule applies to those who wrote it. The Bindery is among those who wrote it. It is not open to an office to be a stranger to its own hand."

— Court of First Concordance, ruling of the forty-first year, in re Bindery of the Lower Annexes

The Bindery paid, and thereafter appended to every schedule a line noting that the schedule applied to the Bindery as well. This line was itself held to be a self-application and assessed for stamp duty. The Bindery paid that too, and its clerk, Ovin Marrow, filed a grievance of forty pages that the Court declined to hear on the ground that the grievance was addressed to the Court and therefore, under Clause 4, bound the Court, which had already decided the matter.

Relationship to Clause XI and the Retroactive Clause

Clause 4 is frequently pleaded alongside the Self-Referential Proviso and Clause 3, and the three are often confused by junior clerks, who are advised to remember that Clause 4 binds, Clause XI suspends, and Clause 3 reaches backward. In practice the clauses are applied in that order: an office is bound by its own instrument under Clause 4, the instrument is sequestered under the Proviso if it is found to be a self-contained archival loop, and any adjustment is dated to before the instrument was written under Clause 3.

This sequence produced the celebrated difficulty of the Winter of the Double Register, when the Registry of the Eleventh Landing found itself bound by a register it had not yet written, on the authority of a ruling that had not yet been issued, which ruling relied on Clause 4. The Registry resolved the matter by writing the register, at which point the ruling became available and the matter closed. The Office of Chronological Order has never accepted this resolution and files an annual objection, now in its sixty-third volume.

Scholarly disagreement

Aris Thorne treated Clause 4 as the clearest instance of what he called governance without foundation, arguing that a clause which binds its own authors can supply no ground for its own authority and must therefore rest on nothing but repetition. The School of Applied Paradox took the opposite view, holding that Clause 4 is the only provision in the Concordance with a genuine foundation, precisely because it requires no external warrant: the authors are bound because they wrote, and they wrote because they were bound. The School's position is set out in its seventh pamphlet, which the Wing of Recursive Application has classified as a Class Γ echo and sequestered under the Proviso; a sealed copy remains consultable by appointment.

A third position, advanced by the College of Plain Reading, denies that the dispute is real. On its account Clause 4 says only that the Concordance applies to its signatories, which was never in doubt, and the elaborate structure built upon it is an artefact of overreading. The College's tract on the subject is twelve pages long and cites Clause 4 four times.

Practical notes

Offices are reminded that instruments issued under Clause 4 must bear the issuing office's seal on both faces. Seals are impressed once and are not to be re-impressed to correct a misalignment; a misaligned seal is corrected by marginal note countersigned by the Keeper of the Fourth Seal. Visitors to the Wing of Recursive Application are asked not to read any document that names them, as this constitutes application and may bind them to instruments they have not seen. Enquiries concerning Clause 4 should be addressed to the office issuing the enquiry.