Page:An essay on the transfer of land by registration.djvu/56

 under the "Bright clauses" of the Land Act of 1870, involves the delay and expense of the old system of conveyancing.

"Now both reason and experience prove that a peasant proprietary cannot prosper, or even long subsist, under the incubus of a costly and dilatory system of conveyancing. Yet such is the English and Irish system; for, though the Irish Registry of Deeds adds considerably to the security of titles to land, it in no degree diminishes the cost and delay of our cumbrous semi-feudal machinery for dealings with land. The prejudices which formerly existed as to the social danger of facilities for transferring and mortgaging land are fast giving way to a rational appreciation of their necessity in modern society for all classes, and for none more than small landowners. A ready and inexpensive mode of selling is indispensable to meet the exigencies of a farming proprietary who require to augment, or diminish, or transfer their small properties as occasion may necessitate or suggest. How then can we in reason create small landowners in Ireland as a social experiment, and yet withhold the legal conditions essential for their prosperity, and even their continuance?

"Surely it is time to cast away the unwisdom that deliberately creates a class of peasant proprietors, yet withholds from them the essential conditions of prosperity—nay, of existence."

In the measure for applying the system to England the contingency of a dead-lock through pressure of business at first starting may be safe-guarded, and the posting of the register facilitated, by limiting the application of the compulsory registration to dealings with the "fee," and with lesser estates and interests in land, the greater estate in which has previously been placed on the register, as also to copyhold and to parliamentary and judicial titles.

Again, in order to secure any beneficial results, the title must be indefeasible, and although we have it in evidence, on the highest authority, that the occurrence of titles so defective that they cannot with safety be placed on the