THE NELSON EXAMINEE. Saturday, January 22, 1859.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XVIII, Issue 7, 22 January 1859, Page 2

THE NELSON EXAMINEE. Saturday, January 22, 1859.

Journals become more nerencßry an men become more equal »nd individualism more to be teared. It would be to underrate their importance to suppose that they serve only to secure liberty: the; maintain civilization. Vr. Tocqubvillk, Of Democracy in America, vol. T.,p.230. Lord St. Leonards, better known as Sir Edward Sugden, and as the most profound lawyer of our time, especially in all cases connected with real property (as land is rather absurdly distinguished iv legal language) has j written two very well-known books upon his |fayourite subject : one a " Treatise on Powers," Jwhich, we are told, is a tough morsel even for lawyers, and the other of much more recent •date; called a " Handy Book of Real Property," written with such transparent clearness of diction and such a freedom from technicalities, as to be within the comprehension of anybody of common sense and common education ; and which has excited general surprise and admiration. This great lawyer has given it as his opinion that a young society ought not to be entangled in the complications of our English law of real property. On its being intimated to him that an edition of his " Treatise on Powers" was wanted in America, he wrote to another well-known lawyer, Humphreys, in these words : — " I regretted that a new State should embarrass itself with our forms of conveyancing, springing out of the doctrine of uses." We have thus the legal and the non. legal mind united in one view of the subject ; for it is almost unnecessary to observe that, to the world at large, it has always been a wonder and a mystery that a hogshead of sugar, or a flock of sheep, or a sum of money jn the fands, could be transferred from one person to another, with scarcely any, or the simplest form of acknowledgment, by a

mere scratch of the pen, as it were ; and that a piece of land, capable of being mapped, drawn, measured, or otherwise described with the minutest accuracy, should require such numerous precautions, such obscure phraseology, such skins of parchment, and such lawyers' bills, to make its sale valid and effectual. That there is nothing in the nature of land itself to cause such difficulty in acquiring or getting rid of, it may be fairly presumed, from the fact, that, in all countries but Great Britain and her colonies, the process is expeditious, simple, and inexpensive ; and even these, and the mother country herself, are getting tired of so cumbrous a system, and devising means to get rid of it. In England, the task is most probably one of great difficulty ; for, as Lord John Russell lately observed at a public meeting, " the law of real property is involved in a maze of technical difficulties, and has been truly said to be the most abstruse branch of English jurisprudence." But here, in New Zealand, with land acquired directly by purchase from the natives, and no titles to land a dozen years old, how happens it that it can neither be bought, or transferred, or pledged, without an expense which is unknown in other business transactions ; an expense which in all cases materially detracts from its value, not only directly, but indirectly, from the additional difficulty thus created in disposing of it, and in the case of very small portions of land, acts as a direct prohibition on its sale. Between eleven and twelve years ago this question was considered at some length in our columns. After describing the complex, tedious, and expensive processes which were the rule in England, the writer affirmed that under*the Registration Ordinance no real reform had been effected here. "As soon as titles have become a little complex by the lapse of years and the changing of hands, all these various processes will have to be gone through in New Zealand exactly as they are at the present day in England, and with this addition, that every word inscribed on the sheep skins, employed in tlie transfer, will have also to he written at length in the Registrar's book." The remedies proposed were, first, the preparation of a standard set of maps or plans. These, en passant, we may observe that we now possess, thanks to our Land Commissioner, Mr. Domett, on a sufficient and uniform scale. All that would be required would perhaps be a duplicate set, preserved, like the standard measures at home, for reference on great occasions only, in case those commonly in use should become damaged from neglect or inadvertence. Secondly, a set of books, headed in accordance with the plans, with a separate entry for each estate. " When the registration commences, every owner of an estate will produce to the local registrar his land order, Government grant, or other evidence of title, on inspection of which the Registrar will immediately make an entry of his ownership in the page appropriated to his estate in the register, and at the same time will issue to him a certificate corresponding exactly with such entry. The certificate will be simply to this effect : — ' District of Nelson, Division Waimea East. I hereby certify that Peter Scott is the registered owner of section 20, Waimea East, containing fifty acres. Nelson, January 1, 1848. J. P., Registrar.' Now this registration being effected, and certificate issued, the owner of the estate in question would have as valid a title, and a far more easily transferable j one, than if it rested on a whole box of sheep skins." It is next shown how this plan would apply to leases, sub- leases, mortgages, assignments, and other transactions in which land is the subject matter in question. The risk, from fire and forgery, is next adverted to. Against fire, a duplicate or metropolitan registry is proposed ; against forgery, the same methods as protect the issuers of paper money, railway scrip, or other instruments of a like kind. Finally, a fear is expressed that although the plan proposed would facilitate the transfer of estates, save great expense, and enhance the value of land very considerably, the interests of lawyers would stand in the way and prevent the adoption of any system so simple and inexpensive. In this we cannot agree with him. If the present system is an abuse, no professional man would advocate its retention on the ground of private interest, any more than physicians opposed vaccination on the ground that they had a vested interest in small-pox; or would object to a system of thorough drainage lest it should diminish their income from low fever or typhus. At all events, the subject is now before the community. It has been brought forward by the circulation of a proposed bill to be submitted to the General Assembly at their next session, which hardly, to our unlearned eyes, appears thoroughly to meet the exigencies of the case, but which, we are glad to know, will meet with a searching scrutiny in no spirit of bit by bit reform, by some who have long taken an interest in the question, and are competent to deal with it. In South Australia, an act has lately been passed, entitled the " Real Property Act;" since which proposals have been issued for a " Land Bank," to complete the system; since, as is well known, landed securities have long been rejected as a basis of accommodation by regular banker* wherever oar English law prevails, on. account of their

costly and hazardous character ; and, beyond all, on account of their want of convertibility and their deficiency in that facility and prompt* ness of in? ci change which ia essential to the success of all mercantile transactions. The subject has already been taken up pretty generally by the press, both here and in the adjacent colonies ; and but one opinion is expressed, to the effect that the evils of the present system are becoming more unbearable year after year, and that nothing short of a complete revision of the law will meet the exigency of the case. The general registry of deeds was the first step in advance, which made all following steps practicable ; but it did not itself supply . all that was wanting. "It gives a list of all the documents which relate to a given estate, it affords the means of identifyiug it, and. of determining the title to it. But it does not register the actual transfer ; it only preserves and renders accessible the evidence that a transfer has been made. Under the best possible system of registration, searches must still be made, deeds perused, and abstracts prepared. All this involves time and trouble,* and consequently expense. A register of .railway shares,-, on the other hand, shows not merely the transactions by which changes of ownership are produced, but those very changes themselves. It shows not only that A has executed a deed purporting to convey certain rights to B, but that the right to the property is actually taken out of X and is vested in B." Tt establishes the title itself. And this reform is not a mere saving of law expenses. It is the making land as readily and as cheaply available as merchandize for the purpose of raising money by sale or on credit ; a change that the learned " Society for the Amendment of the Law " in London declares is estimated by persons of experience and authority in such matters as equivalent to " five years' purchase, some will say ten, in the money market." We shall be glad to see this subject taken up in the true spirit of improvement by our General Government, which has already deserved well of the country, and made itself remarked even in England. We ask them to grapple with this subject in a manner worthy its importance, and to recollect the sentence of that great thinker John Stewart Mill — " that to make land as easily transferable as stock would be one of the greatest economical im- | provetnents that could be conferred on a country." , True to her time, the steamer Lord Worsley made her appearance in our harbour yesterday morning, after a quick passage of five days and a-quarter from Sydney. The' Lord Worsley left Sydney on the- loth instant, at which, date the European mail had not arrived at Melbourne. But the Peninsular and OrientalCompany's steamer Salsette had arrived at Melbourne, afier a passage of 65 days from Southampton, aud thus we are enabled to present our readers with European news to the Ist November. Mr. H. Sewell had arrived at Sydney, and would have come on in the Lord Worsley had not the passengers' berths been all engaged. About 50 passengers have arrived in the steamer from Sydney. We omitted to mention our acknowledger ments to Captain Johnson for the files of papers he has so courteously placed at our disposal.