legal process be simplified (as it might be), the operation might in numberless cases be carried through on terms satisfactory to the present landlords. From what I have endeavoured to express in the fewest possible words, it follows that simplification of existing methods, supplemented by a general registration of ownership, is especially important at the present moment. And what is required for Ireland at a critical time like this is equally suited for, and would be warmly welcomed by, small proprietors of land in other portions of the Empire."
Mr. Henry Dix Hutton, through whose valuable assistance (as I have already acknowledged) I was enabled in the Bill of 1863 to modify the provisions of the Australian Act to meet the conditions existing in Ireland, has contributed a valuable paper on Peasant Proprietorship to the recent Congress of the Social Science Association in Dublin.
The following extracts from that paper bear with special force on this branch of our subject. Mr. Hutton says:—
"Since the. year 1870 Irish Church lands have been sold to about 7,000 purchasers. Of these purchasers, it is estimated 5,000 were bona fide occupiers engaged in farming operations, and converted by sales under the Irish Church Act into peasant proprietors. By an omission, which is strange and regrettable, no provision was made for enabling the Church Commissioners to grant, either directly or through the Landed Estates Court, a Parliamentary title, which might have been entered on the Record of Title. The same remark applies to purchasers under the Bright clauses of the Land Act of 1870. Consequently these small landowners are left under the operation of the old system of conveyancing, although the practicability and importance of registration of title for peasant proprietors is not contestable or contested.
"The 5,000 peasant proprietors who purchased the Irish Church lands have not a Landed Estates Court title, and consequently could not record their titles. Every sale and mortgage by them, as well as by the majority of purchasers
