PREFACE.
The present volume is, for the most part, a compilation from papers read and addresses delivered on various occasions within the last eighteen years. It is published at the suggestion of several Members of Parliament and others, who deem the present juncture peculiarly appropriate for the discussion of a measure calculated to afford material relief to all who are interested in land.
Avoiding, as altogether outside the subject matter, all reference to the more or less party questions of primogeniture and entail, the system of conveyancing herein explained does not interfere with the principles or rules of law, or with the powers of landowners or their rights or liberties; but only with the machinery by which such rights or liberties may be created or protected without the intervention of the statute of uses.
At the same time, the advantages to be derived from the adoption of the system of land transfer advocated in the following pages, are not by any means confined to the simplification of the machinery by which land is conveyed. For perhaps the most important ultimate result of its introduction into the United Kingdom will be, the substitution of indefeasibility of title, in all cases, in lieu of the present
