ances, and that when they were inserted the additional costs, calculated by the number of words employed, could not be more than two or three shillings at the outside. Of course my letter was not inserted, the Times not being very favourable to the Audi alteram partem' principle; but the fact remains, and is undeniable. Deeds have been during the last fifty years, through improvements suggested, supported, and adopted by the lawyers, greatly shortened. At the same time it should be borne in mind that shortening is not always gain; that an established form of words which has been long used, and the effect of which is well known and understood by all who have to deal with their construction, has advantages over new and untried phraseology, whilst the expense attending their adoption is trifling, and need be nothing at all if the Legislature will only sanction a more sensible system of charges. As it is, the modern forms of conveyance in simple cases (and such are the great majority of transactions) can scarcely be shorter, and will bear comparison with charter-parties, bills of sale of ships, and other documents dealing with other than landed property.

VIII. REGISTRATION AND LAND OFFICES.

One fallacy leads up to many, and out of the above fallacies has arisen an idea, probably the most fallacious of all, namely, that private business arising between man and man can be advantageously conducted through a public office. Those who are practically engaged in business know that there is no greater source of delay, expense, uncertainty, and difficulty than in dealing with a public office. In conveyancing this is especially so, and from the old-fashioned Middlesex and Yorkshire Registries, down to the modern Irish Encumbered Estate Court and the Lincoln's Inn Land Registry, public offices have formed a fertile source of delay, difficulty, and expense. The officialism, red tapeism, and routine necessarily attendant upon a public office constantly double the delay and cost of a transaction. Moreover a public office prevents the free action of parties, makes them dependent on those over whom they have no control, and subjects them to rules and regulations they do not understand and cannot see the benefit of. The moment a public officer with his forms and ceremonies, his ignorance of the facts of the case, his want of local knowledge, his necessary adherence to inflexible rules and forms, his Jack-in-office '-like bearing and habits, his short hours and public holidays, his numerous cases, all calling for attention at the same time-is interposed between man dealing with man, a sure and certain obstacle to the ready and easy trans

action of business is created. I need scarcely add that, of course, at every step the public officer cries out for fees! fees! fees! Perhaps no public office has been more belauded than the Encumbered Estates Court of Ireland. Yet to transact business in that court, I can say from bitter experience, is simply heartrending. One example will suffice. It has taken me upwards of three years to force through that court the sale of property producing, when sold, under £12,000. The expenses on the vendor's part, in Ireland alone, amount to the monstrous sum of £1,500, of which no less a sum than £324 was exacted for official charges. Had I been at liberty to sell, without the interference of the court, I could have carried out the sale in less months than it has taken years, and, instead of £1,500, the total expense would probably not have been much more than £100. The conveyances issued by the court, after this sale, are models of elaborateness, bulk, and costliness. For those conveyances a purchaser to the extent of about £8,000 had to pay in costs and fees nearly £200. The total expense of the sale of that property, of £12,000 value, on the part of the vendors and purchasers, may probably be put at £2,000—an amount unheard of outside a public office. All this happened, let me add, in connection with a title which, twenty years ago, was issued by the same court as a Parliamentary and indefeasible title. I am very sorry to say that it is not the only troublesome case in the same court with which I have had to deal. Yet this is the court which the present Lord Chancellor of England and the ex-Lord Chancellor of Ireland lately declared, in the House of Lords, they wished to see introduced into England. Can the force of popular delusion further go? The fact is that the only way in which a public office can compete in utility to the land-owner with private practice is by establishing registries in every market town and large village of the country, where the conveyancing of the district can be transacted by a public officer at the expense of the State. The public has now for twelve years submitted to be taxed for the Land Registry Office, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, to the extent of £7,000 or £8,000 a year for the sole advantage, real or imagined, of land-owners. It is possible, therefore, that it may patiently submit to the enormous expense of such a system as I have suggested. I doubt, however, whether that time will ever arise, and until then I must describe the idea of public offices for the transfer of land as one of the most decided delusions and fallacies with which this paper has to deal.

IX.-INCREASE IN THE PRODUCE AND VALUE OF LAND.

I introduce this, the last item in my programme, because I have been much struck with the envy and ill-feeling encouraged in the public mind towards all owners or occupiers of land. It is scarcely necessary to allude to the wild propositions of an eminent logician and would-be statesman, now deceased, as to the right to the so-called unearned increment of land.' That idea has, I think, gone down to the grave with its author. But the wildest notions are afloat in the public mind about the increase in the productive power of land, and the consequent accession to its annual value. An unfortunate expression of so usually cautious a man as the present Lord Derby, to the effect that the produce of land might be doubled by the skill and scientific knowledge of the present day, has been made rather more of than I think the author intended. At any rate, practical men, like Mr. Caird and others, have demonstrated the fallacy of this idea-even were the productive powers of land illimitable. The fallacy appears to me to lie in a disregard of the cost. With the appliances of modern science, no doubt, a crop of wheat might be made to grow on a billiard-table, but the cost would be ten-fold the value of the produce. No doubt, in the neighbourhood of large towns, and for the requirements of building purposes, land has largely increased in value; but, speaking of the ordinary agricultural land of the country, if the facts as to its present letting value were authoritatively ascertained, I fancy the public would find that it has been cherishing another popular delusion. One fact will illustrate what I mean better than all further words I can use. I now hold in my hand the lease of a farm, of 400 acres, in a first-class agricultural county. It was granted in. the year 1814, and the rent reserved is £400. The fifth generation of the lessee's family is now in occupation of the farm, and the rent paid in this year of grace, 1875, is £300. This is in a district second to none in the kingdom for the application of capital and the resources of science and modern discovery to the improvement of the soil. With this practical illustration I conclude my discourse on popular fallacies, as regards land and its laws, having by no means exhausted the subject, although I fear I have somewhat exceeded the time allotted me.

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A Paper by MR. GEORGE WARDE NORMAN, F.S.S., was read, entitled Some Remarks on the Land Laws of England, with special reference to certain opinions expressed by Sir George Campbell, in a paper read at the Belfast Meeting of the British Association in 1874.' He did not intend to criticise the whole of Sir G. Campbell's productions, but only a few opinions which seem to the writer specially erroneous, and likely, if generally adopted, to produce practical evil. First, Sir G. Campbell more than once asserts and enlarges upon the nature of property in land, as differing from all other property, as having a limited character, so that no injustice would be committed were the rights of its owners interfered with by the legislature, in a way which would be at once negatived as unjust, if proposed to be applied to moveable property. For instance, that a special tax on land would not be unjust. In opposition to this, it is alleged that property of all kinds is the creation of the law. That the law has always permitted land to be bought and sold and bequeathed, without any reservation, and that, under these circumstances, to tax specially the owners of land would be little less than an act of robbery. That the State has of course the right of appropriating for its own purposes land, as well as all other property, but only upon condition that it compensates the owners. particularly insisted upon that a special tax on land would fall exclusively on the owners at the time when it was imposed. Subsequent purchasers would be fully compensated by the less price which they would have to pay for the land. The obligation to military service, abolished by parliament, can furnish no ground for a compensatory claim on landowners now. The opinion of Mr. J. S. Mill that it would be morally allowable to confiscate what he called the unearned increments in the value of land, was supported by no reason which would not be applicable to the confiscation or enhanced value in the case of stocks or shares, which had greatly risen in the market. Sir G. Campbell says a great deal as to the changes in the rights of property in the land, which took place in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, up to which time, he says, the lord was only the receiver of customary payments, and while the people really held the soil. Upon this it is remarked that the use of the word 'people' in this place is misleading; that those really intended by the word must have been the inhabitants of a manor or parish, other than the lord or great landowner; that great changes in holdings of land really took place at this time, the real nature of which has never been thoroughly explained, and is certainly not explained by Sir G. Campbell. All that

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we certainly know is, that the landowners requiring money, rather than the small rents and manual services of their cottier tenants, ejected many of the latter, and converted their humble holdings into meadows and pastures. They thus added greatly to their incomes. They are reproached for thus acting by contemporaries as guilty of oppression; but I have never observed that they were charged with illegality. Nevertheless, if, as it seems to be the case, Sir G. Campbell would punish the landowners of 1875 for the misdeeds of their predecessors in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it would seem but just that they should receive credit for the conduct of their earlier predecessors, who allowed their dependents to escape from serfdom and villanage by their voluntary action, and without legal interference. Sir G. Campbell expresses an opinion unfavourable to the Law of Primogeniture. In this the author agrees, and thinks it would be just to assimilate the law respecting real property to that which regulates personalty. He points out, however, that the effects of such a law would be slight, intestacies being uncommon in England. As respects entails and settlements, the writer points out that entails in England hardly last more than thirty years, and that he thinks it not desirable to interfere with the free disposition of property by will. He points out that personalty, such as stocks, shares, &c. are, perhaps, quite as much tied up as land, and suggests that advantage might arise from insisting that all land should be placed in the hands of trustees, never less than three, who might be able to give an indisputable title to a purchaser or mortgagee. Sir G. Campbell remarks upon the advantages to be derived from the existence of a class of peasant proprietors, and points out that few exist in England; explaining, however, clearly the reasons of this fact, in which the writer fully agrees. Land, however, is not relatively dear in England. It is cheaper, for instance, than in France, where the expense of transfer, in the case of a sale, is very much greater than in England. At any rate, the English system under which, speaking generally, the ownership and occupation are severed, cannot be very bad, as English agriculture is the best in Europe, and the produce raised very much greater than that of France, for instance. In proof of this Lavergne is cited. Sir G. Campbell enlarges upon the want of good dwellings for the working class, and in this the writer fully agrees with him. He observes that one matter which must be altered, before the working classes can obtain healthy and commodious dwellings, is a strong desire on their part to possess them; that they desire strongly to have good and sufficient food themselves,