Page:An essay on the transfer of land by registration.djvu/48

 charge of the Record of Title Department. Mr. Urlin, examined before the Committee of 1879, in reply to Queries 1986 and subsequent, informs us that "the Irish Act embodies all the mistakes of Lord Westbury's which Lord Cairns's Act proposed to remedy. It is an imperfect system following rather closely Lord Westbury's system. It is permissive, so that any one by signing a simple requisition could exclude the operation of the Act as regards his land on its passing through the Estates Court." Section 32 enables persons whose properties were upon the register to withdraw them at any period. "A gentleman applied to me to remove his land from the register, and assigned as his reason for so doing that he wished to effect a loan, and the solicitors through whom he was to obtain the loan required him to remove his title from the record. I think when a title is once on the register it should, in the public interest, always stay there, otherwise owners are exposed to unfair pressure."

I have heard of similar incidents, and as a matter of fact, English landowners being an attorney-ridden people, option in these matters, though nominally given to the proprietor, is virtually given to his solicitor. We are not, however, in a position to condemn professional men for opposing measures which, by the admission of the officials appointed to carry them out, are so defective and so "incapable of being worked upon any such scale as would render it of sufficient public advantage;" and even when a method free from these defects is brought forward, we must not look for any superhuman disinterestedness from conveyancers or any other class of men. As the old conveyancer, the stage-coachman along the turnpike road, regarded the locomotive and the rail, so must the legal conveyancer regard a system which would cut down his emoluments from pounds to shillings, and enable every man of ordinary education to transact his own transfers and other ordinary business.