LAND LAWS AND TRANSFER 183 



land registration with secret conveyances and equitable 

 mortgages, though the example of Australia proves the 

 contrary ; but there can be no valid reason why all con- 

 veyances should not be public, or why informal mortgages 

 should continue to exist. Unless titles are guaranteed by 

 registration, registries become merely records of dealing 

 with land, or additional epitomes of titles which lawyers 

 are compelled to search. The mere establishment of a 

 registry of deeds is a retrogression. What is required is a 

 public and compulsory system of land registration, based 

 upon careful cadastration, which shall pass the estate by 

 the official act of the registrar. Some cases of hardship 

 may admittedly occur in the first establishment of a land 

 registry; yet the number and importance of these are 

 exaggerated. Adequate means for introducing the new 

 system are already provided by the register of the Land 

 Tax Commission. The intricacy, expenses, insecurity, and 

 delays of the existing mode of land transfer necessarily 

 check the circulation of land, and lessen its value as the 

 basis of credit. To small capitalists, the class which all 

 land reformers desire to encourage, the cost of conveyance 

 presents a formidable obstacle. Deeds are not only ex- 

 pensive, but to ignorant persons terrible. Small investors 

 cannot afford the luxury, and, if they could, they shrink 

 from the terrors of the unknown. The market might be 

 glutted with land, but till the present system of examina- 

 tion of title and execution of deeds and conveyances is 

 abolished, purchasers of the class of peasant proprietors 

 cannot, and will not, come forward. The Settled Land Act 

 of 1882 gave tenants for life powers to sell, but it could 

 not make land saleable. The difficulty is, not how to in- 

 crease tBe quantity of land for sale, but how to double the 

 number of purchasers. There is plenty of land in the 



