96 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE [rv. 



" establishing free trade in land " means providing for 

 its purchase and sale in the same manner as Govern- 

 ment and other stocks and securities are purchased 

 and sold in the market. 



The authors of the Act under consideration appear 

 to have had this object in view. The persons in whose 

 names land is registered are to be the absolute owners 

 (not owners for life or in remainder), in the same 

 sense that proprietors of Government stock are 

 absolute owners. The directors of the Bank of 

 England, who have charge of the national stocks, as 

 well as of their own, refuse to take notice of trusts 

 the Registrar of land is to do the same. The cautions 

 which may be entered on the register are apparently 

 devised in imitation of the distringas which may be 

 placed upon Government stocks. 



To a landowner engaged in commercial specula- 

 tions, it may be advantageous to register his land 

 under the Act. The registration might render it 

 more easy for him to raise money on the security of 

 his estate, or to sell it with despatch, on an emergency. 

 He might, perhaps, have his land quoted like so much 

 stock, and make it a subject of speculation in the 

 market. If many estates were thus offered for public 

 sale, there might be called into existence a body of 

 land-brokers and land-jobbers, who would benefit by 

 land speculations ; but I see no reason to suppose that, 

 by such transactions, the cultivation of the soil would 

 be improved. How could free trade in land prodm-o 



