A REAL MEASURE FOR IRELAND.
Mosr of the recent memorials and petitions from Irish landown- ers express at least one reasonable desire ; they call for "facili- ties for the transfer of land." It is well to teach the owners of land how to cultivate it, but to the great majority of them, in Ireland, the teaching comes in vain. The landowner has no means to turn the lectures into practice : he is scrambling for the differences between the interest of his mortgages and the total of his rent-roll, to say nothing of the exactions of his agent or his receiver. He has no capital himself, and he can borrow no more. Lord of a thousand acres, (which would be doubled in value in proper hands,) and castle to boot, he can neither use them him- self nor make over one of them to others who can. To exagge- rate here is impossible : all admit the sad truth. It is no wonder, then, that "facility of transfer" is considered a political neces- sity for Ireland.
Well, but how is this !t arises mainly from the state of Irish titles ; in which all the faults of English conveyancing are multiplied tenfold. Before an acre of land can be safely and legally transferred, all claims for the last sixty years must be in- vestigated, all charges proved to be discharged, all incumbrances paid off, all judgments satisfied. This is bad enough in Eng- land; but in Ireland, partly from the slovenly way in which the legal business has been done, partly from the number of persons who cut and carve out interests in land, the making a title is not
only tedious and expensive, but sometimes utterly impracticable, if the ordinary rules of evidence are to be adhered to. Thus it is that the castle is in ruins, and its acres are one half bog and the remainder half-cultivated ; and yet here is land which would pay everybody, and if relieved of all these charges, would bring equal blessing to him who gives and him who takes." How to attain this desirable result, is what the people of Ireland are praying for, and it would indeed be a boon. We believe the means are nigh at hand, and are available to a firm and skilful statesman.
If Ireland is worse off in some respects than England, she has advantages over England in certain matters, which although not all devised for that end, would all turn to great account in help- ing her out of the difficulties we have alluded to. We will men- tion some of them. 1. She has an accurate territorial map, com- pleted at great expense under the direction of the Ordnance; and she has thus the foundation of a short and simple system of con- veyancing ready-made. 2. A general registry of deeds has been long established ; which, though defective in many respects, would be useful in various ways, and would supply a machinery available to a certain extent. 3. Local Courts' having some juris- diction over land, with a staff easily adapted to other dealings. 4. Surveys, valuations, and statistical proceedings, most useful for the object in view. The "real measure" for Ireland would then be—First, to es- tablish a Tribunal to deal with all encumbered estates. The Lord Chancellor's bill of last session attempted this ; and the Govern- ment deserve praise for bringing in a measure right in principle, though faulty, as we think, in detail. It allowed every owner of a freehold estate, or any incumbrancer on it, to proceed to a sale of the lands incumberecl, by means of the Court of Chancery ; and the Master was to make a title specifying what incumbrances should be barred. The purchaser was to pay the purchase-money into the Bank, and was to gain a title as against the persons who received' the money. The great fault of the bill seems to have been the adoption of the Court of Chancery in the first instance. That Court has no greater favour in Ireland than here. The emergency demands a more summary tribunal; one that will ict on evidence which a man of common sense would take, but which a Master in Chancery would boggle at ; a tri- bunal that would do substantial justice by cutting through knots instead of attempting to unravel them, leaving in the end no part of the fund to divide : the kind of court that decided on the 20,000,0001. compensation fund for the slave-owners' in which all sorts of conflicting claims were raised, principally of the same kind which affect Irish titles, and which disposed of 43,564 cases, 4,136 with parties having opposing titles, with only two effective appeals against its decisions. This is the sort of tribunal impera- tively called for, as peculiarly adapted to deal with Irish titles, where complete evidence is rarely to be had. Give an appeal to the Court of Chancery, if you please ; but do not to the other woes of the Irish landowner add as a matter of course the miseries of the Masters' Office. If an expeditious working tribunal were appointed, empowered to make a title, to receive the pur- chase-money, and then to decide who is entitled to it, infinite good to all parties would be done. If the title were cleared, the full value of the land would be given, and all persons justly en- titled would receive their own or have it secured : the land would thus be set free; a new class of proprietors would arise ; fresh capital both Irish and English would flow in ; and the soil would be turned to its best uses.
But this would only be one half of the measure : for, secondly, means must be taken to prevent the recurrence of the former evil. No sooner should any purchase be made under a sale so ordered, than it should be entered in a Register, and thus a root of title— that desideratum so longed for by all conveyancing reformers— 'would be secured; and henceforth all dealings with the land in question would be entered in this book, be easily seen, and easily comprehended- It is here that General Colby's map would be available. It is here that assistance from the Local Court might, If necessary, be obtained. It is here that the immense sums of money expended on Ireland in various ways would be found not to have been spent in vain.
Is every country of Europe to have a ready mode of dealing with land, which has stood the test of experience ; and are we to be deprived of it, with all the materials ready-made to our hands? Are we inferior in practical habits of business to Holland, Bel- gium, Germany, France? So far from it, lamentably as we are now behinclhand in this matter, the system, once introduced into Ireland, would be worked far better—rendered more available to the necessities, of the case—than in any foreign country. The ready convertibility of land into money—its uses for temporary as well as permanent investment—would become familiar to us, as they have long been to our neighbours ; and the benefits that would result can hardly be overrated.
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