§ Order for Third Reading read.
§ The SOLICITOR GENERAL moved the Third Reading of the Bill.
§
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That this Bill be now read a Third Time.
MR. P. WOODasked when the House might expect the long-promised report of the Commission appointed three or four years ago to consider the question of a registry for England?
§ SIR G. GREYhad been in hopes that the report would have been presented long-ago; but the Commissioners having been engaged in preparing it, he expected that it would at an early period be put in possession of the House.
MR. DRUMMONDwould take that opportunity of stating the course which he intended to pursue with regard to the Real Property Transfer Bill, which stood for the second reading that night. He had brought forward a similar Bill last year, but was recommended to withdraw it till the report of the Commission was laid on 365 the table. He believed the real cause why that report bad not been received was that, with all their learning, the Commissioners had not got common sense enough to know that it was possible to describe a piece of ground by other means than by a map, or by taking the latitude. It was quite clear that it was next to impossible for an independent Member to carry through a Bill of this sort; and if he asked the House to discharge the order for the second reading of his Bill, it was because he thought it better to trust to a really true reforming law officer of the Crown, an animal as extraordinary as a Whig Chancellor of the Exchequer with a shilling in his pocket. He thanked the hon. and learned Gentleman the (Solicitor General) for this measure, and hoped that they would have a good Registration Bill for England next year.
§ COLONEL DUNNEsaid, the opinion in Ireland as to the value of the hon. and learned Gentleman's law reforms was very different from that expressed by the hon. Member who had spoken. A Member of that House, whom he did not see in his place, told him that the substitution which was proposed for the present simple mode of registration in Ireland, was one of the most complicated and difficult description, which he doubted if the hon. and learned Solicitor General understood himself. He referred to the operation of the Incumbered Estates Act, and said that there was no such thing as property now recognised in Ireland—that there had not been such a court in Ireland for the last 700 years. He would not, however, oppose the Bill.
The SOLICITOR GENERALdeprecated the system of dragging in the working of the Incumbered Estates Bill on the discussion of a question like the present; but as it had been done, he wished to refer to a statement made a few nights ago by the hon. Member for Roscommon, to the effect that the Commissioners had sold land as belonging to one estate, which actually formed part of another. The circumstances were these: The ancestors of the gentleman whose estate was sold had leased the adjoining estate, and had confused the boundaries between them. The Commissioners, therefore, in selling the estate, had sold it subject to the proper boundaries being afterwards ascertained; so that, in point of fact, they had not sold any part of the adjoining estate.
§ Bill read 3a, and passed.
366§ The House adjourned at half after Twelve o'clock till Monday next.