Lord Halsbury on Thursday brought forward his Bill for facilitating
the transfer of laud. It is a bold Bill. The Tory Lord Chancellor abolishes primogeniture; makes the real estate of an intestate personalty ; sweeps away all local customary rights of inheritance, such as gavelkind ; and prohibits entail. The ground thus cleared for absolute ownership, the Bill, after a certain period, compels registration as a condition of transfer or mortgage, and allows the owner, after giving five years' warning, to apply to the Court of Transfer—which will in the end be set up in every county—to grant him an indefeasible title. The Bill does not carry out the full idea of the land reformers, who want the owner liable for taxes to be able to give an indefeasible title, any other man with claims retaining only his claim to compensation ; but it clears the ground for complete reform to an immense extent. Lord Selborne approved the Bill on the whole, and there seems little doubt that the lawyers will carry it safely through the Lords, and send it down to the Commons, to be perhaps expanded, perhaps dropped, owing to the pressure caused by Irish obstruction. No Bill is safe now, even if the whole population wish for it; but Lord Halsbury has endeavoured to keep his promise.
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