LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
THE NEW LAND LAWS [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—Lay newspapers almost invariably bark up the wrong tree when discussing legal matters. It seems, therefore, ungracious to criticize your fair and well-informed article. You have, however, perpetrated a legal " howler" in one of your concluding sentences. There is no registration of titles in Middlesex and the Ridings of Yorkshire. These counties have local Registries of deeds, a very different thing. Com- pulsory registration of titles exists only in the County of London and in the County Borough of Eastbourne. As you . rightly say, the New Acts slipped through Parliament practi- cally without discussion.
The Law Society in London and the local Law Societies regarded the Acts as the only alternative to the immediate introduction of compulsory registration throughout the country, and accordingly accepted them. During the next ten years, private conveyancing and transfer of land through the Land Registry are to compete, and there is to be no extension of compulsory registration without a vote of a County Council in any given area. As in nearly 80 years only two Councils have adopted the system, any extension on these lines is likely to be gradual. It is quite likely, however, that the " improvements " to which the system of private conveyancing has been subjected by the experts responsible for the Acts will cause the breakdown of that system. Leaving the future to our grandchildren, the new law has thrown _practical conveyancers into the thickest fog the oldest of them can remember. The " People's Budget " was a joke to I am, Sir, lice.,
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