Page:An Essay on a Registry for Titles of Lands - Asgill (1698).djvu/28

 Horn for every year after, which shows their Age: And I am informed that one Deed of sixty Skins was heaved out of a Conveyancer's Office the other Day.

At this rate in a little time the Clyents must drive their Deeds out of their Lawyers Chambers in Wheel-barrows. These Assignments and Re-assignments of Securities have been a pretty sort of Perquisites, especially if they have but an old Judgment or Statute kept on foot, these are certain annual Incomes. I knew two Serjeants at Law, (Usurers) made it their common practice every Long Vacation to swop Securities with one another, to make their Mortgagers pay for the Assignments; and (doing this without Advice of Counsel) they once Merged an old Term, and thereby spoiled their Title to secure their Fees; which (as to them) answers the Character given of these Graduates by a Forreign Historian, Est in Regno Angliæ genus hominum doctorum indoctissimum communiter vocat, The Learned Serjeants at Law: Now I cann't think but these Conveyancers and Assigners would be ashamed to produce such things to a Registry; and that therefore they must either abbreviate their Conveyances, or loose their Practice.