(TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.") SIR, —In your article
on " The Radicals and the Land," in the
number of the 11th inst., you state one of the aims of the Radicals to be to establish free-trade in land, and to make it saleable as Consols or gas shares. Two of the great obstacles in the way are, first, the difficulty of defining exactly the thing to be bought and sold ; and secondly, the cost and intricacy of the present system of land transfer.
Will you permit me to suggest that the first may be largely reduced by the creation of authoritative State maps, marking out the present boundaries of lands and houses, and connecting the various parcels with numbers ? The parish affords an area capable of subdivision in this manner, for which we have a precedent in the tithe-commutation map, whilst the recent Ordnance survey will enable us with very little delay to carry such a plan into actual execution throughout England and Wales.
Very little curtailment need be made in the form of conveyance deed of freeholds at present in use ; the fertile source of trouble, responsibility, and cost, and therefore of hesitation in buying and selling land, lies in the investigation of title now necessary.
A short Act of Parliament, declaring that no inquiry as to title need extend beyond twenty years or the last conveyance, and making the State map decisive as to boundaries, would cut off at one blow two-thirds of our difficulties. Stringent provisions for the punishment of fraud should be inserted. The essential form of the new contract for sale would therefore be : —
"I, A B, agree to sell to C D, who agrees to buy, the land (or houses) numbered 27, 34, and 35 in Map No. 7, 1873, being the map for the parish of Z, in the county of Y, for £ , the purchase to be com-
pleted on the day of 1873, at
A revision of the maps would be needed from time to time, and could be made by the Royal Engineers. The solicitors' costs would be reasonably regulated on a, per-tentage of purchase money.
The foregoing is but a rough sketch of what practical experience on a large scale has suggested as a possible remedy for many exist-
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