TWO OF LORD RANDOLPH'S FOUR POINTS.
THOUGH it might not be quite just to say of Lord Randolph Churchill that his fault is thinking too little and talking too much, there is no unfairness in asserting that he injures the effect of his political efforts by omitting to consider adequately the subjects of which he treats. There is diligence enough, doubtless, about details, and a marvellous display of technical knowledge. If, how- ever, we look below the vesture of oratorical artifice, we see how constantly he fails to grasp the essentials of his subject. In his treatment of the four points of his last speech- land-law reform, the rehousing of the working classes, licensing, and the eight-hours question—this failure was very obvious. All four are unquestionably of the first im- portance, and are just now occupying the minds of the electors, and all four require the closest attention of our statesmen. In bringing them forward, therefore, and in focussing public attention on them, Lord Randolph is doing a good work. It is only when he comes to treat of them specifically that his weakness is apparent. The problems he raises are each one of them perplexed. in the -extreme ; yet he manages to treat them all as if there was no difficulty whatever, and fails entirely to bring any aid to the work of finding a practical solution of the problems presented. In the case of the Land Laws this is specially apparent.
What Lord Randolph says about the advantages of easy transfer is all very well, though, of course, no one has doubted it these ten years. Still, it is good to repeat it, and to point out also, as he does, that the thing can be done if people will only insist on it. All this, however, should have been only by way of preface, and in order to enforce his suggestions for getting over the practical difficulties that stand in the way of reform. Instead, however, of meeting these, Lord Randolph simply ignores them, while at the same time cleverly giving his audience to understand that he has shown them exactly what ought to be done. The grand obstacle to the registration of titles to land is the cost. It was, in reality, the fear of the expense, and of a further claim on their already diminished incomes, which made the Lords throw out Lord Halsbury's Bill. Until, then, this impedi- ment is surmounted, and a Bill is produced which will throw no extra burden on the land, we shall not obtain a satisfactory and workable measure. This being so, it is the business of statesmen who aspire to lead the country ,to try and devise such a system. That the task is a . difficult one, we have no desire to disguise. Still, it is possible to lay down some of the conditions upon .which a scheme could be founded. If it is essen- &al that there shall be no burden imposed on the land- owner, it follows that there must be no investigation .of title as a preliminary to getting on to the register. Hence the next question is this,—How are we to determine whose name to place on the register as owner, and whose „not ? The answer we would suggest is as follows. Let either the State or each of the County and Town Councils, whichever has been chosen as the authority, begin by taking the Ordnance map of each shire or borough, and finding out who are what we will term the primci-facie owners of each square inch. The country has been geographically mapped out,. field by field, already ; all we want to do now is to map it out by owners. From the ,Ordnance map, then, exact schedules of the land can be compiled and the ownership of them registered. But who is the prima facieowner ? it will be asked. The owner- ship of land is often disputed. Surely it is not proposed to put down the name of the first comer? Most assuredly .not. People forget, however, that every piece of land and every house in the Kingdom has an ascertainable—nay, an ascertained—prima-facie owner. Under an Act of 1862, the Assessment Committee of each Union has to enter in the rate-book not only the names of the occupiers of all the land in every parish, but of the owners. No doubt, as was found in the compilation of the recent Doomsday return, this is sometimes imperfectly and carelessly done. It would, however, be quite easy to bring the few slovenly Unions up to the mark, and thus obtain a complete list of prima facieowners, who would be either the occupiers themselves, or the persons from whom the occupier deducts the Income-tax collected from him under Schedule A, or else to whom he pays his rent. Of course, this prinui- fade owner may possibly be exercising a wrongful claim over the land. That, however, does not matter, as it is not proposed to strengthen his claim merely by registering. His ownership will be entered upon the register for what it is worth, and will become no better and no worse by that act. The officials, by entering the prima-facie owner on their register, will, practically speaking, in all cases shave entered the name either of the owner in fee-simple, or of the person beneficially entitled for his life, and so %will have secured the individual with the power to sell, either at Common Law or under the Settled Land Act of 1882. The person registered will, in fact, be the person in whom, prima facie, rests the power to sell. Thus, by the use of simple machinery—machinery, too, which can- not be called impracticable, since it obtained for us the return of owners of real property in Great Britain made some fifteen years ago—the register could be started. i In addition, however, to the name of the owner, it would be necessary to provide for the registration of mortgages and family charges. These could not well be looked for by the State or by the Local Authority, nor would it perhaps be fair to compel them to come in and be registered. If, however, it were enacted that all future charges to be valid must be registered, and that any person who claimed to have a previous charge might, if he liked, enter a caveat against the sale of the land, giving notice that no transfer must take place without ten days' notice being given to him, all past mortgages would very soon be voluntarily registered. To this scheme it will be perhaps objected that all sorts of persons with bogus claims, or with no claims at all, would enter caveats at large against their neighbours' land. Very possibly so ; but would that matter ? The filing of the caveat would give the filer no advantage. A bogus claim would become no more effective by appearing on the register as a caveat than by being nursed in secret. People who dislike the idea so much in connection with their land, forget, too, that the same thing can at this moment be done with stock, and that the ubiquitous claimant of disordered imaginations might, if he liked, be perpetually entering caveats against their Consols and debentures.
It may be alleged, however, that the effect of getting . the men with the prima facieright to sell on the register all over the United Kingdom, would, after all, be of no avail, since even after a transfer on the register, the buyer might have produced against him either a claim on behalf of a person alleging himself to be the real owner, or of some one holding an encumbrance made before the enact- ment compelling the registration of future charges. No doubt this criticism is apparently damaging. The register such as we are suggesting would not immediately be able to produce indefeasible titles. If, however, Parliament chooses to enact that twelve years of registration such as we have described should give an indefeasible title, and that all outstanding charges must then be registered to be valid, time would soon make the work perfect. In any case, however, people would probably be very soon willing to trust the register, for in three or four years the titles would have begun to accumulate evidences of genuineness. Say that three years after the Act was passed, Mr. Jones wished to buy a piece of ground of Lord Castlewood. At the present moment he must employ a solicitor, though he knows Lord Castlewood has had the right to sell for the last ten years. Then, however, he would look at the register, would find " Castlewood Baron," opposite the field he wanted, and in addition, perhaps, would find a caveat re- ferring to a mortgage on another part of the estate, and the record of marriage settlement, not, however, affecting him. Under such circumstances, he would probably not hesitate to buy. For timid persons, however, and till the time fixed by Parliament for the maturing of titles had elapsed, it would be quite possible to follow the Colonial practice, and set up an insurance system under which the buyer could make the seller pay some small per-centage of the purchase-money to a Government office, and in return get an insurance policy against a bad title. No doubt the plan we have ventured to suggest as affording a possible solution of the problem is ideally not so good as Lord Halsbury's, which would enforce a real proof of title before registration, but would compel such registration only when the land next changed hands after the Act. This, how- ever, means a considerable expense, while the plan we put forward would not be open to the same objection. Again, though it would be necessary to notify changes in the ownership to the registry office, all persons who liked to do so might go on with the old investigations until the prima- fade titles had matured into indefeasibility, when, of course, they would become entirely unnecessary. We do not as we have said before, pretend by our crude proposal to have solved the question. Of two things, however, we are certain. One is, that any scheme of land-transfer, to be successful, must get all owners on the register without delay, and must do so without puttin • them to the expense of disclosing their titles. The other is, that it is to these points that our statesmen must turn their attention. It may be that, to fulfil these conditions, it is necessary to adopt a scheme which will not take complete effect till after many years. That is possible. Still, half a loaf is better than no bread, and we would rather see the prima facietitles on the register and beginning to mature, than wait and hope that, in spite of the solicitors and the landlords, Parliament will some day pass such a measure as that which was wrecked this summer in the House of Lords.
As to Lord Randolph's proposals in regard to the work- men's dwellings, we have left ourselves little space to speak. They seem to us open to the very gravest objections. The object is to civilise the slums, but it will never be attained if in attempting to achieve it the rates are immensely in- creased. If the rates rise beyond a certain point, the poor will be injured, even if they have nominally ceased to pay them. To crush the employers of labour is to ruin labour. Of course, Lord Randolph's scheme could be worked so as not to burden the rates ; but would it so be worked ? In the first place, there is the danger that the builders would contrive to job in such style that money would run away in the contracts like water. Supposing, however, they did not, would not there be a risk of the rents being unpaid when those who were individually the tenants were collectively the landlord ? Besides, would not the cheap rents and good houses Lord Randolph speaks of produce subletting, and an influx of people from the country such as would at once lower the rate of wages ? Surely it would be far better to enforce sternly and un- flinchingly the principle that no man should be allowed to make a profit out of houses in an insanitary con- dition, or by allowing overcrowding. Let the land- lord he given his choice to put his buildings in order or have them empty. The result of adopting such a system has this great advantage,—it limits the number of houses, and so does not encourage an unnatural immigra- tion and the consequent lowering of wages. We cannot forbid London to increase, but we can forbid the occupa- tion of houses -unfit for human habitation. No doubt to do so may to a certain extent raise rents, or may keep them from falling. This, however, is not necessarily an evil, for rent is often the only barrier which the English town artisan has to secure him from being overwhelmed by competition from the country and abroad. The restric- tion upon the running-up of cheap bad houses which would be produced by the enforcement of a law against insani- tary dwellings would tend. to limit competition, while the provision of cheap houses by a Municipality would arti- ficially exaggerate its evils. Either scheme would produce habitable houses, but Lord Randolph's would open the door to jobbery, and would dislocate the labour market ; while that which we support would still maintain the natural barriers against excessive competition.
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