Evening Post. TUESDAY, JANUARY 5, 1926. NEW LAW OF PROPERTY

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 3, 5 January 1926, Page 6

Evening Post. TUESDAY, JANUARY 5, 1926. NEW LAW OF PROPERTY

The Labour candidate who sought to prove the degeneracy of the Seddon Government by contrasting the portly Statute Books of previous years with the attenuated volume that had just been issued by the Government Printer was not applying a conclusive test of merit. In legislation, as in everything else, quality and quantity do. not always go hand in hand. "A great book is a great qvil," says a Greek proverb, and that a great Statute Book may be a very great evil is shown by the saying of the Roman historian that the more corrupt the Bepublic became the more numerous were the laws. But the remarkable measure to which reference was made in a London message yesterday defies the sages and responds with equal success to the tests both of quantity and of quality. The long interval of three years and a half which divides the operation of.the Law of Property 1 Act from its passing is presumably a tribute to its far-reaching, not to say revolutionary, effects, and certainly indicates no doubt of their beneficence. In size it is said to be the longest measure ever passed by the British Parliament, comprising 191 sections and 16 schedules, and extending to 313 pages. In the number of sections and schedules there must be dozens of New Zealand Statutes that beat it hollow, but in the number of pages, which is the real test of bulk, it may be J that we no lpnger lead the world, i But bulk, ag' we have already in. j dicated, is but a clumsy te~st. "It is not growing, like a tree," that makes either a man or a statute better be. The size of the Law of i Property Act, 1922, may be safely presumed to be no larger than was demanded by the range and the complexity of the subject-matter. Apart altogether from the relative j scales of the communities and the interests affected, no New Zea-i lander was ever called upon to make so deep a cut at tangled and inveterate abuses as the draftsman of this measure and the Legislature which he advised were called upon to make. Though our forefathers brought most of '■the institutions of the Mother Country with them to their new home and the laws of England, "so far as applicable to the circumstances of New Zealand," were declared to j have been in force therein on and after the 14th January, 1840, there were some of the old institutions, laws, and rules that were unable to survive the voyage, and others survived but for a very short spell. Among the former were the House of Lords, all kinds of hereditary titles, and some strange forms of land tenure. The speed with which reform got to work on some of the heritages from the past which had not perished en route is shown by the fact that a Conveyancing Ordi- ' nance "to facilitate the transfer of real property, and to simplify the laws relating thereto," was passed in 1842. The preamble of this measure is interesting:— j "Whereas by the law of England thftre are various forms of assurance. for the transfer of property and diver 3 rules relating thereto which by lapse of time have become inconvenient, and are altogether unsuitable to the circumstances of, this colony. It was a relatively simple matter to cut away much of the medieval tangle in which the land system of England was involved before it had become firmly rooted in this country, and in this case it was so well done that the bulk of the Conveyancing Ordinance still survives in our present Property Law Act. To reform the English land system in the country of its origin was a very different matter, and nearly a century after New Zealand's first Conveyancing Ordinance was passed it has proved a herculean task. For how many of the benefits conferred by that and subsequent Acts of the New. Zealand Parliament the Mother Country has had to wait till the Ist January, 1926, we are unable to.say, but the following summary of Lord Birkenliead's measure, which we take from "Whitaker's Almanac" for 1923, shows how similar have been the objects in view, and what an immense advance has been achieved by the British Parliament at a single stroke:— The main object of the measure, which is the result of many years' labour of legal reformers, prominent, ! amongst whom are Lord Haldane and j the late Lord Chancellor, Viscount I Birkcnhcad, is to facilitate/ and cheapen all dealings in land. The present complicated law, which is the growth of centuries of legislative enactments and decisions in the 9SMi*i 1! £E4Si*i.i2.S £2ffiP*£!it!SJS i

simple code. The law of real property is assimilated to that of personal property, and all property, real and personal, will, under the now Act, descend in the same manner and under the same regulations. . . . The Act puts an end to relies of the feudal system, including copyhold and customary tenure, Gavelkind, BoroughEnglish, and other local customs affecting succession.

A measure which has done all this, and a great deal more, in one hit is properly described as one of the greatest achievements of the Mother of Parliaments.