SECURITY FOR OUTLAY 251 



the point. In 1863 I bought, and in 1869 I sold, an agricultural 

 property of just 1,000 acres in Prussia. The terms being agreed 

 upon, I, in either case, went with the other contracting party to the 

 land court, where the official land register was opened, showing, 

 by a map, to an inch what the property was, what were its boun- 

 daries, what State and local liabilities rested upon it, and established 

 the title beyond doubt. The exchange of property was effected 

 by a stroke of the pen, and the costs were trifling. 



In 1879 I sold a diminutive site — once the site of copperas works, 

 now part of the site of Lawes' Manure Works — at Deptford, which 

 had been in the possession of my father and myself ever since 1833. 

 There were deeds, of course, but the difficulty was to establish the 

 title — though there was no one to contest it. As luck would have 

 it, there was a collector who had collected the rent for just twenty 

 years, so that with the help of his affidavit I could establish just a 

 twenty years' title — twenty years being the minimum length of time 

 prescribed. However, after the property had been sold and handed 

 over, and the money had been paid, that affidavit turned out to be 

 wrong in the particular of boundaries and under a curious arbitra- 

 tion I was made to disgorge a considerable part of the money 

 received, and the expenses connected with the transaction were 

 very much larger than it had been in the case of my whilom Prussian 

 thousand acres. 



Such a thing could not have happened where there was a land 

 register with the duty imposed upon landowners to enter their titles 

 in it. 



Now do not let us take fright at the idea of a land register being 

 a foreign thing, good for Prussia, but to be avoided for ourselves. 

 The idea was, in truth, English long before it became Prussian- 

 only, as in the case of summer time, Germany was first to see the 

 advantage and to put it into operation. Henry VIII. desired to 

 have a land register— not a land values register of the Lloyd George 

 type, which a few years ago was made the subject of so much 

 adverse criticism, but a bond fide land register just like the Prussian 

 and like the land registers of Australia, New Zealand, tin' Wert 

 Indies and Canada, and already part of the United States all of 

 which were not copied from the Prussians, but invented indepen- 

 dently by an Australian, Sir Robert Torrens. " Blufi King I Ill's " 

 statesmen pondered over the question. Recent lords cliamrll 

 down to Lord Herschell, expended their ingenuity upon if. Y.t, 

 we have arrived only at a purely voluntary system ol registration 

 of title— which, by the way, within the limits of its application i 



