The Controversy over a Land Registry. 107 



In connection with the fourth objection, an advocate of 

 registration frankly admits that men might find considerable 

 difficulty in registering those titles and incumbrances which 

 had their origin in the remote past. An infant whose deeds 

 were in the hands of trustees could not be expected to observe 

 the rules of a registry — a difficulty which also applied to 

 persons beyond the seas ; and to those who had lost or parted 

 with their titles, thus becoming unable to perform the duty 

 required at the proper moment. 



In reply to such prejudices of his scheme as these, the 

 advocate of a public registry contends that the proportion of 

 people who now lose their capital in the purchase of lands 

 and loans on account of bad titles is considerably greater than 

 that of people who would suffer thus under compulsory regis- 

 tration, and that the many must not be sacrificed for the few. 

 Then, too, infants had their guardians, and those beyond the 

 seas their trustees, to watch over their interests ; and even 

 those who had failed to produce their titles in due time, might 

 prevent purchasers from dealing with their lands by being 

 allowed to enter a caveat in the registry. It was true, he 

 admits, that the law thought it wise to make especial pro- 

 vision for infants, femes covert, and persons beyond the seas, 

 in the matter of fines: yet the two cases were not on all fours, 

 there being far more danger in the case of fines for even a 

 legal expert to be, through ignorance, defrauded of his estates, 

 than in that of registry.^ Another objection might be raised 

 to his scheme as it affected wills and testaments, which when 

 suppressed for several years might lead to a loss of rights by 

 beneficiaries on account of some innocent action on the part of 

 the heir at law in selling the estates devised. The remedy 

 for this was to limit the suppression of all such documents to 

 a certain fixed period, beyond which they became invalid 

 unless produced. 



^ It may be mentioned, in passing, that a writer who had set himself 

 the special task of meeting this contx-oversialist's arguments, contends 

 that the case of public registration of deeds was, notwithstanding what 

 had been advanced by his opponent to the contrary, parallel with that of 

 finding a record for the uses of a fine or recovery, 



