Real Property Act. 31 



registry office will be in effect a land tribunal, but with inferior 

 position and authority, and deficient in those high qualities which 

 ought to accompany an office of such grave trust, and so impor- 

 tant to the best interests of these countries." 



These remarks of Mr. Scully are quite justified by experience, 

 although they may not be fully appreciated during the earlier 

 stages of the Land Titles system. But as the property under the 

 Act becomes extended, a multitude of questions will be daily 

 elicited, which can only be satisfactorily determined by judicial 

 investigation. If there be no satisfactory means of effecting this 

 within the department, and it be necessary to refer them all to a 

 superior Court, they will either be disposed of without due 

 enquiry, or will cause the parties a delay and expense that will be 

 intolerable, and far outweigh, as a public burden, any that the 

 creation of a special Court would occasion. 



Messrs. Urling and Key, the learned editors of "The Manual 

 of English Practice under Lord Westbury's Act," express in 

 their preface a strong opinion that either a separate tribunal 

 must be established, or additional powers conferred on the Regis- 

 trar. This investigation, it will be observed, is not limited under 

 our system to titles submitted to applicants, and which if not 

 fully supported, may be rejected, and merely left to operation 

 of the previous law. It applies also, and will every year be 

 increasingly applicable to the investigation of claims of succes- 

 sion by will, or otherwise, to land already on the register, and in 

 regard to which no case can be dismissed unadjudicated, without 

 absolute denial of justice. 



The New South "Wales Act is especially defective in this 

 particular. Not only is there a deficiency in judicial power, but 

 some of the powers which it does confer, requiring legal knowledge 

 and experience for their due exercise, are left to the Eegistrar- 

 Greneral, sometimes alone, and sometimes with the concurrence 

 of two lay Commisioners, even without exacting a reference (as 

 in the case of application for certificate) to their legal advisers. 



A General power of amending errors on the register is for 

 example, thus conferred. This may appear at the first glance a 

 very simple matter, but it will be found on consideration to 

 involve, in the absence of any criterion distinguishing errors 

 merely clerical from those dependent on disputed questions of 

 law or fact, — a virtual authority to decide these latter questions, 

 however complicated, and also to execute summary judgment there- 

 on by conferring or withholding a title to property of any value. 

 And this without even professing acquaintance with the law or 

 rules of evidence, or commanding any machinery for conducting 

 a judicial inquiry. The claims of applicants to be registered by 

 succession, under will, settlement, or otherwise, will also contin- 

 ually present features of the same character. In excluding or 



