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consideration, it should be dealt with according to the present law of voluntary dispositions, and that if there has been any fraud or impropriety the transfer should not confer a title on the transferee. only other point in the scheme is that of caveats. We propose that caveats should be of two kinds-caveats proper and caveats of inhibition. Any person who thinks he has a right to be apprised of any dealings in respect to an estate upon the register may enter a caveat, the effect of which will be that no dealings can take place until the lapse of a certain number of days after notice to the cautioner, just as is the case in matters connected with stock. If the owner undertakes to satisfy the Landed Estates Court, by proper security to the extent of the whole value of the estate, that the caveat has been wantonly and improperly entered, he may then, without waiting the specified number of days, have it removed. 2 So, also, the court may order the caveat to be taken off after hearing the parties, and, if it has been wantonly entered, the person entering it will be answerable for any damage caused by the delay. Caveats proper, therefore, will be put on the register simply by individuals. Inhibitions will be of a more permanent and formal character. When there is a settlement for a great number of years, the inhibition will operate as a restraint upon sale, and will be put upon the register by the court itself, if it thinks fit to do so, until the expiration of a particular time, as, for example, until the children under a marriage settlement come of age. These inhibi

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tions will be placed on the register by the court, and it will not be in the power of individual to enter them. any question then arises-Where do you mean to have this registry? We propose that it should be a metropolitan registry simply * We propose also that it should be self-supporting, by means of moderate fees taken in return for the services which it will perform, such fees to be a matter of future regulation; and in this way we hope that very little charge will ultimately be imposed by the establishment of this office. I should add that, inasmuch as the register is to be confined to estates in respect of which there has been a declaration of title by the Landed Estate Court, and inasınuch as I have assigned a period of fifteen months to elapse before there can be any declaration of title, it will not be necessary that the work of the registry-office should commence at once. I propose, therefore, that the operation of this act should be fixed by orders in council, according as it is found that the Landed Estates Court has made progress."

We now proceed to the examination of some of the details of the bills which Sir Hugh, in concluding his speech, ventured to hope would be found not ill-considered.

The three sections in the original Bill No. 1, which were discarded, are secs. 18, 26, & 28. Sec. 18 provided, that whenever a contract for sale was entered into, the parties to that contract, or either of them, might apply to the Landed Estates Court for a

2 There was no clause to this effect in the bill.

conveyance to the purchaser, with the restriction that the application should not be made by the vendor alone without the consent of the purchaser, or by the purchaser alone without the consent of the vendor, unless, in the latter case, the purchaser should give security for payment to the vendor of all such additional expenses as he might thereby sustain, beyond the expenses he would have sustained if no application had been made by the purchaser. Now, in the first place, it is unreasonable that a vendor should, at the option of a purchaser, be forced into a Landed Estates Court litigation; secondly, while the purchaser might be prosecuting his suit in the Landed Estates Court, the vendor might prosecute his for specific performance in the Court of Chancery, and thus a conflict between the two courts might have arisen; and thirdly, the judges of the Landed Estates Court must have had recourse to a clairvoyant to determine what the vendor's costs might have been had something been done which was not, and was not intended to be done.

Section 26 directed that the court should not execute a conveyance to a purchaser without the consent of the vendor, unless proof should be given of the payment of the purchase-money. This clause was objectionable, inasmuch as the Court, in the first instance, executes the conveyance provisionally, and the purchaser certainly could not be required to pay the purchase-money to the vendor upon the execution of a conveyance which might be annulled. The amended bill is silent as to the payment of purchase-money; but under the power to make rules for giving effect to the objects of the measure, the court could, we presume, make rules on this somewhat important point.

Section 28 gave the Landed Estates Court all the power of selling land vested in the Court of Chancery, by the Leases and Sales of Settled Estates Acts; thus not only creating a new jurisdiction, concurrent with that of the Court of Chancery-the consequences of which might have been, that an application for a sale, refused by a Vice-Chancellor, might have been entertained and granted by the new court-but also giving the new court powers of effecting sales of settled lands of all tenures, and of every kind of interest in settled lands, whilst the rest of the bill applied only to estates in fee simple. This section must have been remarkably well-considered !

The eleven new sections in the amended bill No. 1, are secs. 2, 19, 27, 31, 33, 41, 42, 47, 49, 67, and 68.

Section 2 provides that the act shall apply to England only; a necessary provision, seeing that there was nothing in the original bill to limit the operation of the measure to that part of the united kingdom.

A trustee with power to sell, was empowered to apply, with a

view to a sale, to the court for a declaration establishing his title to sell; but the five years' possession clause, which is referred to in the Solicitor-general's speech, would have effectually prevented trustees not in possession or receipt of the rents of the trust estate, from taking advantage of the act. Sec. 19 of the amended bill, therefore, provides that possession or receipt of rent by any person, consistently with the instrument creating the trust, shall be deemed to be the possession or receipt of rent by the trustee.

Section 27 empowers the court to make rules as to the mode of executing and confirming a conveyance by the court, and of making modifications therein, or additions thereto.

It being considered doubtful whether, under the original bill, the court could make more than one declaration or one conveyance in respect of any one application, sec. 31 put an end to the doubt, by providing that the court may, to suit the convenience of the applicant, make several declarations in respect of, or several conveyances of, different portions of land in respect of which the application is made.

Where land is subject to any doubtful claims capable of being compensated by money, the Landed Estates Court is empowered to free the land from such claims upon payment of such a sum of money as the court may deem sufficient. By the original bill the money was directed to be paid into the Bank of England (where it would have lain idle), to an account to be named by the court. Sec. 33provides that compensation money may be paid to trustees approved of by the court, or into the Bank with the privity of the Accountant-general of the Court of Chancery, to the credit of such matter as the Landed Estates Court may direct, with power for that court to order the money to be invested on application for that purpose by any person interested in it. Now here we have a notable example of the dangers of tinkering. Sec. 31 of the amended bill is a repetition of sec. 31 of the original bill, with some verbal alterations; but these have not been made with regard to the new sec. 33, and thus we find that the Landed Estates Court is directed to determine the rights of persons interested in the compensation money "so paid into the Bank of England under this act," and to distribute the same accordingly; but what is to become of the compensation money if paid to trustees under sec. 33, the bill does not say.

Sections 41 and 42 relate to the notices to be given to persons by whom caveats may be lodged. A notice may be sent by post, or may be served upon the cautioner personally; and, if sent by post, the letter is to be registered and marked outside, "Landed Estates Court."-(Amended Bill, sec. 40.) The original bill provided that the notice, if served by post, should be deemed to have been served at the time when the letter containing the

same would be delivered in the ordinary course of the post (sec. 37); but the amended bill provides that no proceeding shall be taken on the faith of the notice having been served, until after the expiration of such period, not less than five days, as the Landed Estates Court by general order may appoint (sec. 40); and the new sec. 41 directs the Postmaster-general to return to the Registrar "—we think that the words "of the court" might have been added-all letters so marked as mentioned above, and addressed to any person who cannot be found.

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Section 42 provides that no purchaser, for valuable consideration, shall be affected by the omission to send, or by the non-receipt of any notice. There is a similar section in the amended bill No. 2, and on this last we shall have to make some remarks byand-by, which will be applicable to both sections.

The original bill imposed a penalty on persons suppressing documents or evidence in the course of proceedings before the court. Sec. 47 of the amended bill imposes also a penalty on persons fraudulently altering any documents in the course of such proceeding, or giving false information to the court, knowing the same to be false.

Section 49 provides that nothing in the act shall entitle any person to refuse to make a complete discovery by answer to a bili in equity, or to answer any question in any civil proceeding in the courts of law, equity, bankruptcy, or insolvency; but no such answer is to be admissible in evidence against such person in any criminal proceeding under the act. How it happened that the law-officers of the crown should have put their names on the back of the original bill without seeing to the insertion of such a clause, must be a matter of astonishment to all.

The original bill directed that the court should hold its sittings at a place to be provided by the Treasury, and empowered the judges to sit in chambers either together or separately, and gave the judges so sitting the same powers as if sitting in open court; but whether the judges were to sit together or separately, or for what purposes they were to sit in open court, the bill did not mention. Sec. 67 remedies this defect, by providing that the judges shall sit together in open court for the determination of such questions arising upon the examination of titles as may be reserved by them-the words "or either of them" are omitted— for discussion in open court.

By the original bill any person might have appeared before the court as agent for another; sec. 68 declares that no person shall be entitled to appear for another in any proceeding in the court, unless he is a barrister, solicitor, or certificated conveyancer.

We now turn to the original bill No. 2, the omitted sections of which are secs. 17, 44, 48, 49, 53, & 55.

Section 17 provided, that where any land was charged, in pursuance of the act, with the payment of any money or interest, there should be implied (unless such implication be expressly negatived), a covenant, on the part of the registered proprietor, to pay the money and interest so charged. We do not know why this clause has been omitted. It would have been useful, inasmuch as money might have been lent on the security of a registered charge alone; whereas, under the amended bill, such a proceeding, if not impossible, would be impolitic, for the borrower would be but a simple contract debtor; which, supposing the security of the land charged to prove insufficient, would not be satisfactory. Could trustees, for instance, lend their money on such a security?

Section 44 provided that if any person should suppress or misrepresent any document, or fact, relating to the title to any registered land or mortgage, he should be guilty of a misdemeanour. When it is remembered that the title to registered land, or a registered charge, can be affected only by what appears on the register, and that one great duty of the registrar is to suppress all notices of trusts, and that no purchaser is to be affected by any notice, of any kind, not on the register, it is difficult to conceive what possible object the draftsman could have had in view when he penned this clause, and still more difficult to account for the fact of the Solicitor-general permitting it to remain after he had well considered the whole of the bill in which it was contained.

Section 48 provided that the registrar should keep a list of the persons by whom notices of leases had been given, and that the person whose name was entered in the list, should be deemed to be the "holder of the notice" in respect of which he was registered, and that no notice should be removed without the consent of the holder, for the time being, of the notice. An extremely clever provision is this, by means of which, in the event of forfeiture of the lease, and eviction of the lessee, or upon the expiration of the lease, it would have been impossible to remove the notice without the consent of the holder. The framers of the bills seem at first to have thought that this consent would in no case be withheld !

Section 49 provided for the transmission of notices, upon the death, bankruptcy or insolvency of the holder, or upon the marriage of a female holder, but made no provision for transmission on assignment of the lease by the holder himself.

Section 55 provided that on the death of a cautioner his personal representatives, in the event of bankruptcy or insolvency his assignees, and in the event of a marriage of a female cautioner her husband, should be entitled to notice in the place

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