Page:An essay on the transfer of land by registration.djvu/51

 the kingdom, tending to jobbery and undue influence; and finally the consideration that, should the metropolitan system prove unsatisfactory, despite all experience to the contrary, there would be no difficulty in substituting the district method. Whereas the converse course would be attended with very great expense and serious entanglements.

In the Colonial Acts, the admission of land to the register is limited to fee-simple estates, and to lesser estates or interests created subsequent to the registration of the fee simple.

This limitation greatly facilitates the official procedure, by causing the folium appropriated to each parcel of land to commence with the root of title, and, in a much greater degree, by causing the process of placing land on the register to be gradual.

Lord Cairns (query 3006 of his evidence before the recent committee) estimated the number of transactions in land in this country annually at 300,000. It may safely be assumed that of these, less than one-tenth, or 30,000, would be dealings with the fee, requiring to be placed on the register. The statistical returns in the Blue Book referred to show that in Australia a staff of 14 officers and clerks suffice for a business of 17,000 transactions annually, costing in salaries and office expenses something under £7,000 per annum. Therefore, making allowance on the one side for comparative economy in working on a greater scale, and on the other for greater complexity of the titles to be dealt with, it would appear that an addition of thirty employees, and an increase of £15,000 in the expenditure, should suffice to render the staff under Mr. Spencer Follett fully competent to the efficient working of the department for some years to come. These additions, moreover, would be required, not all at once, but gradually, as the number of estates on the register increased, and the costs would be more than covered under the moderate scale of fees in the schedule annexed.

From the above, it will, I think, be admitted that the district