A FULL REWARD FOR THE TILLER. 405 



made upon the land. The advantages to be secured by 

 registration are accordingly convincingly manifest. Every- 

 thing is judicially noted down and kept in its proper place. 

 But it had been doubted if all the information entered on 

 the register could be kept strictly private and protected 

 from pr^dng eyes. That apprehension has hkewise been 

 proved to be quite unfounded. The register is kept strictly 

 private and not shown to any one but those establishing a 

 clear right to see it. Once more, it was thought that how- 

 ever cheap subsequent entries might be, the first entry, 

 for which deeds would have to be examined and claims 

 considered, must involve much expense, and that the dis- 

 cretion given to the Registrar whether to accept or to 

 reject an application might carry disappointment with it. 

 However that danger has proved absolutely negligible and 

 would altogether disappear if, as one could wish would 

 happen, registration were made compulsory. In truth 

 everything is made easy to the landowner. The prize to 

 him is an indefeasible title and absolute power to transfer 

 or divide, as if deaUng with stock ; and in case of such 

 transfer or of the taking up of a mortgage, cheapness of 

 the transaction such as there has not hitherto been at all 

 practicable. Vendors' costs have in the case of values up 

 to £500 been £2 12s. 6d., instead of £7 los. ; in the case of 

 values up to £5,000, ly ys., instead of £45; purchasers' 

 in the same cases respectively being £4 2s. 6d., instead of 

 £7 los., and £22 ys. in the place of £45. On the raising 

 of a mortgage of £5,000 the costs are £29 14s. in the place 

 of £90. And business is concluded on the spot, once more 

 in the same easy way and with the same economy of time 

 as in a transfer of stock. 



It must indeed strike one as surprising that, with such 

 advantages within their easy reach, landowners should 

 not have long since as a body sought the protection of the 

 register. The reasons probably are, apart from an engrained 

 vis inerticB and deficient knowledge of their own interest — 

 possibly also with an inarticulate groundless fear that after 

 all " walls have clocks and some of them have repeaters " 

 — landowners have allowed themselves to be adversely 



