164 REPORT—1857. 
millions set free, that had been locked up in barren mortgages for scores of years. Up 
to the end of the legal session of 1853, the British purchasers were, as to number, 
one in twenty-three; as to total amount of purchase-money, one-sixth. Since that 
date, both these proportions had fallen off, and the Irish had now their land market 
almost entirely to themselves. However, the fee of upwards of 600,000 acres in 
Connaught, or nearly one-sixth of its extent, had been acquired by British purchasers ; 
and the intermixture of these, and of English and Scotch farmers settled in the far 
West, with the native proprietors and their tenantry, tended greatly to improve and 
develope the resources of this, the most neglected province in Ireland. The facilities 
afforded for sale and transfer, and the vast extent of land thrown into the tenant- 
market by the agency of the Commission, has certainly prevented tenant-right agita- 
tion from assuming a dangerous agrarian aspect. 
In allusion to the ruinous condition of landed property in the famine years, the 
author had been examined before the Committee of Peers on the subject of the labour- 
rate debt, and stated, from his personal knowledge, that long before the evidence was 
closed, the British Peers on the Committee had resolved unanimously to recommend 
a remission of the debt. They merited our gratitude; for had it been enforced, a 
vastly greater number of our landlords would have been ruined, by their estates being 
forced into a depreciated market during the panic that succeeded the famine. 
Registration of title by map was strongly urged on the consideration of the Section, 
as a necessary complement to the completeness of a great Jand-sale tribunal ; and the 
author quoted, in support of that proposition, a portion of his own evidence before 
the “ Registration of Title Commission.” A map, correctly executed, under careful 
supervision, spoke a more clear and definite language than even the wording of the 
abstract. The Ordnance Survey was available as an auxiliary, and the instrumenta- 
lity might be applied, through means of the machinery of the Encumbered Estates 
Court itself, at a small additional cost. Had this plan been adopted, the titles to 
nearly one-seventh of the country would now have been in a forward process of 
registration by map. 
The Encumbered Estates Act had effected the most extensive and salutary revolu- 
tion which had ever occurred in Ireland, and that too without exciting one angry 
international feeling. But its beneficial results were mainly extrinsic of the condition 
as to property being encumbered; and the principles upon which it was constituted 
ought not to be exceptionally applied. In short, both at home and in our dependen- 
cies, the liberation of real property from unnecessary legal delays and restrictions, 
combined with the facility of its sale and transfer, would increase, beyond calculation, 
both the security and prosperity of the British empire. 
The author stated, in conclusion, that the progressive improvements in the sales 
were in great part attributable to the prudence and cleverness of the conducting soli- 
citors; but that the success of the Commission itself was due to the zeal and ability 
of the Commissioners, especially the late Chief-Commissioner, Baron Richards, with 
whose name were indissolubly connected the benefits conferred upon Ireland by a 
tribunal which that learned judge so efficiently organized and so indefatigably worked 
in its earlier stage of difficulties and unpopularity. 
On the Influence of inadequate or perverted Development in the production of 
Insanity, Disease, Want and Crime. By Dr. H. M‘Cormac. 
On the Progress of Free Trade on the Continent. 
By M. Corr VANDER MAEREN. 
Registration of Births, Deaths and Marriages in Ireland. 
By ArtuHurR Moore, M.B.A. 
After some preliminary observations as to the uses and importance of a general 
registration of births, deaths and marriages, the author described the systems in use 
in England and Scotland, and their results; and adverted to the anomaly of Ireland 
being the only part of the United Kingdom, and almost the only country in Europe, 
without such a registration. He observed that the object of his paper was not so 
