I04 History of the English Landed Liter est. 



shall be at liberty to inroU or register his Estate, or it must 

 be under this penalty, that if he fail herein he must lose his 

 Estate. If we suppose the former ; then every man is still at 

 liberty as he was before, and nothing is eflPected by it. If the 

 latter, viz., that he shall lose if he do not inroll the Estate he 

 hath, or, which is all one, it shall be in the power of him that 

 inrolls a subsequent Title to make the former not inrolled void ; 

 then either that inrollment or registry must be barely of his 

 Claim or some abstract of his Title ; or he must inroll the 

 tenor of the Deed or evidence by which he claims." Suppos- 

 ing, then, that a man is allowed to register only a mere 

 abstract of title, he would, unless furnished with the best legal 

 advice, be liable to omit something or other essential to his 

 title. If by so doing he would incur the penalty of forfeiture, 

 he would be induced to enroll the whole deed. If, on the 

 other hand, the law indemnified him for error, so long as he 

 entered as much of his title as he conscientiously deemed 

 sufficient, the whole design of registering and enrolling would 

 but end in a public deceit and insecurity. No other course 

 was practicable, therefore, than the enrolment by law of a 

 complete and authentic deed or other record, so that the 

 purchaser or lender could not possibly be cheated under the 

 credit of a public office established solely to prevent fraud or 

 loss. 



Again, another disputant decides that in order to stop the 

 pernicious practice of mortgaging estates to two, three, or four 

 different parties without informing the later mortgagees of 

 the earlier incumbrances, it should be treated as a felony, and 

 its perpetrators rendered subject to the punishments of im- 

 prisonment and forfeiture. 



The only remedy, therefore, was to introduce a law com- 

 pelling " all persons, whatsoever, who have or shall have any 

 Title or Incumbrance, that is chargeable in any Estate real, to 

 Register the same by a day certain, or else the Party neglect- 

 ing to register such his Title or Incumbrance shall be con- 

 cluded the same by all the subsequent Purchasers, 'bond fide^ or 

 to the like effect." 



The chief obstacles to such a remedy were: first, that it 



