¶1 This very question, whether a party to an action on a sealed note executed before the first of August, 1868, is a competent witness since the passage of the act of 1879, ch. 183, has been fully considered and decided at this term of the court, in Tabor v. Ward; and the decision there made may be taken as the opinion of the court in this case.
¶2 Since delivering the opinion in that case, on a further examination of the subject, we have met with an authority so very apposite, that we have thought it worth while.to cite it here as confirmatory of the views of the court.
¶3 Mr. Wade in his treatise on Retroactive Laws, where treating of statutes affecting remedies and changing the rules.of evidence, which are not unconstitutional, holds: “So a statute changing the rule of evidence as-to the contents of sealed instruments, so as to let in testimony in rebuttal of the legal presumption of consideration as therein expressed, was applied to instruments signed and sealed prior to the statute.”
¶4 “The competency of a witness in a civil suit is to be determined by the law as it exists at the time he is called upon to testify, regardless of what may have been the rule at any previous time.” See section 215 and notes 4 and 5, and the authorities there cited to sustain the -text.
¶5*298 There is no error. The judgment of the superior court is affirmed.
¶6 No error. Affirmed.