664 report— 1878. 



has a right to insist on without any express agreement on the subject. There is no 

 reason, then, why their existence should not he implied in every such deed, leaving 

 it open to the parties to make any agreement they please with respect to qualifying 

 or extending their effect, or negativing their application altogether. This would 

 shorten many deeds by at least one-third their length. And similar covenants 

 against incumbrances by trustees might be implied, and, where only part of an 

 estate is sold, covenants for the production of title deeds by the vendor. I shall 

 now strive to go a little deeper to the root of the evil, by trying to show how the 

 title to the land itself might, in my judgment, be simplified more than it is, with- 

 out interfering unjustly with existing rights "or restricting freedom of contract. 

 The remedies I suggest are the abolition of the middleman tenure, and the assimi- 

 lation of the law of succession in the different varieties of tenure. I propose that 

 the middleman should be enabled to purchase, by compulsory sale, his landlord's 

 rights, in analogy to the English Acts enabling copyholders to compel their lords 

 of the manor to enfranchise their holdings. I do not think it would be any more 

 violent interference with the landlord's rights to force him to sell them to the 

 middleman, than it was to force a lord of the manor in England to enfranchise a 

 copyhold. 



It is scarcely possible that anyone will dispute the question that the assimila- 

 tion of the law of succession, in freehold and chattel real property, would simplify 

 titles, and therefore facilitate the transfer of land, as there are numerous instances 

 in which the one farm, or even a portion of the same house, is held under both 

 tenures, and even the one lease through one portion of its duration is freehold and 

 another chattel. I cannot discover any valid reason why there should be the two 

 kinds of tenure ; nor were the two even deliberately or purposely created, but 

 merely are remnants of the old feudal period, when leaseholds for years were not 

 regarded as constituting any estate in land, and were allowed to go like cattle to 

 the executor. The popular view is to assimilate the succession of freeholds to 

 leaseholds. It would appear to me that a fair settlement of the question would be 

 to recognise the eldest son's right to inheritance, to restrict the widow's right to 

 dower, or one-third of the annual profits for her widowhood only, as exists in lands 

 held in gavelkind, and to allot a third portion to the younger children during 

 their minorities — leaving the remaining third to the heir, who would get the whole 

 on his mother's death or second marriage, and on his brothers and sisters attaining 

 full age. This, which would remedy the great hardship of the present law as regards 

 freeholds, would, I think, make a useful alteration in the law of chattels real. 



5. On Impediments to the prompt carrying out of the principles conceded by 

 Parliament on the Irish Land Question. By W. Neilson Hancock, 

 LL.D* 



'In this paper I do not propose to deal with any principles as applied to the 

 Irish Land Question, except those which have already been conceded by Parliament. 

 With respect to one branch of the land question — the encouragement and facilities 

 for the creation of peasant proprietors — a very elaborate inquiry has been made by 

 Mr. Shaw Lefevre's committee, to ascertain the impediments to the successful working 

 of what are called the Bright clauses. I propose to state the results of a scientific in- 

 vestigation on principles of economic science and jurisprudence of the impediments to 

 the working of some of the other clauses of the Land Act. The British Govern- 

 ment has to deal in India with the most eastern branch of the Aryan races, and in 

 Ireland with the descendants of what was, before the discovery of America, the 

 most western branch of the race. The reform of 1860, substituting contract for 

 tenure in the relation of landlord and tenant, and the Act of 1870 recognising 

 tenant right, reversing the presumption as to improvements and favouring small 



* Published in ' Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland,' 

 pt. liv. vol. vii. p. 343. 



