U. ROBINSON: ANTICIPATIONS 487 to be subject to any incumbrance. But, because the Com- mittee could not, after trying for three months, settle what an incumbrance was, the proposal fell to the ground, and registration was left permissive, that is, nugatory. " The English people," said Cromwell, " will take Ireland, which is as a clean paper in that particular, for a precedent ; and when they see at how easy and cheap a rate property is there preserved, they will never permit themselves to be cheated and abused as they now are." ^ And yet the advocates of registration had not wholly failed. The Bedford Level was a creation of the Republicans; to them it owes its regis- tration system : ^ to them also are due, however remotely, the acts for Yorkshire, and Kingston, and Middlesex, the Victorian legislation for Ireland, the permissive statutes of 1862.^ Pierrepoint objected to their schemes, the injustice done to persons nominally entitled, and the expense.* Hale was on the other side.^ But a student of the history of land registries in England may well doubt whether any one interested in land desires them. As Hale said, every feature of the title must be inroUed, " as well for the time past as for the time to come; otherwise the plaister is too narrow for the sore . . . for, if any one leak be left unstopped, the vessel will sink as if more were open." The law of personal property was at this time more im- portant than that of real. Personal property, when em- ployed in agriculture, had still a far higher relative value than it now has ; ^ and commerce was on the rapid increase. Cases like Twyne's '^ of mercantile immorality, connoting »7 Comm. Journ. 67, 100, etc.: Ludlow, 123 (137), 165 (184), 398 (407) St. 1653, c. 10. Cp. G. Smith, " Irish Hist, and Irish Character,"
- . /.
- Statt. 1649, c. 29; 1654, c. 20 (cp. c. 57); 1650, c. 10; 15 Car. ii. c.
17 (cp. 10 Sim. 127) : Dugdale, " Hist, of Imbanking," etc., cc. 32-41, 54 (1662): Carlyle "Cromwell." » With St. 25 and 26 Vict. c. 53 cp. Bradish v. Ellames 10 Jur. (N. S.)
- " A treatise," etc. u. s.
- " A treatise showing how useful . . . the enrolling and registering of
all conveyances of lands may be," etc. Cp. Philpot, "Reasons and pro- posals for a registry," etc. (1671); Adam Smith, " W. of N.," book 5, c. 2, pt. 2, app. to articles 1, 2: Mill, " Pol. Ec." bk 5, c. 8, § 3. •Prof. Rogers, "The laws affecting landed property" (1869), p. 11. ^3 Rep. 82 (" qiiaeritur ut crescant tot magna volumina legit: in promptu caussa est; crescit in orbe dolus").
