Page:An essay on the transfer of land by registration.djvu/15

. If the policy of secrecy be approved nothing would be easier than to limit the privilege of search to beneficiaries and their agents. But the opposite policy has been thoroughly tested, and has produced none but beneficial results, as applied to wills, and estates, and interests, under the various systems of registration. Thirdly, recent improvements in the method pursue a in the Edinburgh Registry have materially diminished the delay and expense as regards index and search.

Upon the whole, the superiority of the Scotch conveyancing over that in operation in England would seem to be established by the evidence taken before the Parliamentary Committee of last year.

It remains to consider its relative advantages when contrasted with those afforded by registration of title as in operation in the colonies; and, as I have a sort of paternal interest in the latter, I will avail myself rather of arguments furnished to hand by recognised authorities who are free from the suspicion of any such bias. Mr. Denny Urlin, a barrister who had long official experience in Ireland, giving evidence before the Select Committee, last year, on "Land Titles and Transfer," states the conclusions he had arrived at thus: "I had considered the question [registration of titles as opposed to registration of deeds] for some years, and it appeared to me that there were weighty, in fact, insuperable, difficulties to a registry of deeds as distinguished from a registry of titles. The result of the former has been to increase the expense and delay incident to every dealing with land; to preserve as blots upon titles a very large number of deeds executed for temporary purposes, because a mortgage, or other deed, once coming on the register, remains there for ever; it is never removed, even although the mortgage is paid off—the blot remains, and a satisfied or extinct transaction remains on the abstract of title for ever afterwards. The result has shown that the registration of titles is much more efficient and much less costly than the registration of deeds. The mode of regis-