Page:An essay on the transfer of land by registration.djvu/44

 'Registrar' shall record the transfer, charge, dealing, or matter specified in such instrument in manner hereinbefore provided; and thereupon the estate or interest shall pass or become charged, dealt with, or affected in manner and subject to the covenants, conditions, and contingencies specified in such instrument, or by this Act declared to be implied in instruments of the like nature."

The permissive use of deeds sanctioned by Lord Westbury's Act, involves a combination of two incompatible principles—"registration of deeds" and "registration of titles"—producing a hybrid measure, which Sir Henry Thring (member of the Royal Commission of 1868) pronounces to be " entirely unworkable, and to differ little from an incomplete registry of assurances, and to possess all the disadvantages without any of the advantages of the numerous schemes formerly proposed for the registry of deeds, and therefore should be altogether discontinued."

Again, the 14th section of Lord Westbury's Act prescribes that the register shall consist of three separate books, viz., the "Register of Estates," to contain merely the map and description of each parcel of land; the "Record of Titles," in which are to be set forth the various estates and interests held in each parcel; and the "Registry of Mortgages and Encumbrances," affecting the same; reference from each of these books to the other to be maintained by a series of numbers. After an experience of over twenty years in conducting registration in shipping and in land, I have no hesitation in saying that such a method as this trebles the work, and gives occasion for error and confusion which scarcely any vigilance could entirely prevent; and Mr. Spencer Follett, Q.C., himself; the chief of the department, in his evidence before the same Commission, repeated before the recent Committee of the Commons, admits that "this cumbrous and involved mechanism does not admit of its operating on any such scale as would render it of sufficient public advantage."

Again, the provision that "no title shall be accepted for