20 MAY 1922, Page 2

In the House of Commons on Monday the Solicitor-General, Sir

Leslie Scott, moved the second reading of the Law of Real Property Bill, which had come from the Lords. The subject of the Bill is so amazingly complicated that several speakers in the debate confessed that it was utterly beyond them. Naturally, laymen who tackle the astonishing mass of traditional legal phrases and obsolescent and fantaatic customs embedded in the historical evolution of our land tenure, feel rather as school children would feel if they sat down to read a philosophioal treatise. One speaker remarked that nobody in •the House. of Commons, except Sir Leslie Scott, really understood the Law of Real Property. If that be so, it was fortunate that Sir Leslie Scott expounded it. He did so with exceptional lucidity, and the Bill had something like a unanimous welcome, except from the Labour Party. The general object of the Bill is to facilitate and cheapen all dealings in land. Real property is to be assimilated to personal property in regard to its legal incidence.