TBANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 665 



ownerships — the legislation of 1877, giving a preference to equitable over legal 

 rules, and favouring compensation and restraint in lieu of forfeiture, have effected 

 such large changes, that the whole law as to land requires to be reviewed with a 

 view to its simplification. The effect of the Land Act of 1870, in recognising 

 tenant right, and the property of agricultural tenants in their improvements, has 

 been to bring within the domain of law property worth some millions of money 

 belonging to several hundreds of thousands of people, that before, owing to its 

 want of recognition, required no legal machinery for its management and disposal. 

 If this, as in every other case of concessions made by Parliament are to produce 

 contentment, and lead to good government, they should be promptly and cordially 

 accepted in all their consequences, and, above all, the legal and official arrange- 

 ments should be as completely and as effectually as possible organised, so that the 

 parties intended to be benefited may really get the benefit conferred on them by 

 Parliament. Again, when English or Scotch institutions are extended to Ireland, 

 the latest and most improved form which is adopted in either of the sister countries 

 is the one that should be extended. The suggestions I have ventured to make all 

 fall within these principles: — (1) That the eleven district registrars of the Court 

 of Probate should be consolidated with the county officers, as under a recent 

 reform the commissaries have been consolidated with sheriff's officers in Scotland. 

 (2) That the office of sub-sheriff should, on the Scotch model, be made permanent, 

 and consolidated with the county officers. (3) That the entire jurisdiction in 

 bankruptcy should be entrusted either directly or by remission to the local courts as 

 in Scotland. (4) That to enable poor people to prove their wills, and take out 

 administration as cheaply and as locally as possible, the recent Scotch Acts for this 

 purpose should be followed. (5) That taking the 150 towns in which County Court 

 Judges sit, as the established convenient limit for exercise of local administrative 

 jurisdiction, the petty sessions clerks of these towns should be the officers to cany 

 out the cheap local proof of wills. (6) That to make the petty sessions clerks in 

 these towns suitable for this and other duties that would devolve on them as sub- 

 ordinate officers of justice, the principle of the English Justices' Clerk's Act, 1877, 

 should be extended to Ireland. (7) That the great principle of union rating 

 carried for England in 1856, and extended in principle to the whole of London in 

 1867 and 1870, should be followed in Ireland: the commencement made in 1876 

 being completed by the full adoption of the English system. (8) That this reform 

 would diminish the stimulus to interfere with the distribution of population pro- 

 duced by the 3,438 electoral divisions in Ireland, with an average population of 

 1,600, as compared with the 35,000 average population of the English area of 

 charge. (9) That the English principle of valuation for taxation according to 

 letting value should be substituted for the old Irish principle, still retained, of 

 valuing according to scales of prices of agricultural produce. That the Irish 

 principle conflicts with live and let live tenant-right. (10) That the adoption of a 

 uniform basis of valuation for the purposes of taxation through the United King- 

 dom, besides its natural justice and equity, is of importance as a recognition as far 

 as possible of the principle of maximum identical legislation. (11) That the 

 principle of simplifying and codifying the law which in recent years has been so 

 successfully carried out in India, should be applied to Irish law, and especially to 

 the whole of the laws relating to land in Ireland. 



SATURDAY, AUGUST 17, 1878. 

 The Section did not meet. 



