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shall not acquire the legal estate in any freehold land in the district until he is registered as owner of the land." It is further provided that the title with which an owner of freehold land is registered shall not be less than a possessory title. The effect of this provision will be that every purchaser after the Bill is put into force, as an incident to acquiring complete ownership of his property, must get his title registered. There is also a provision under which persons who succeed to freehold property on the death of any person will have to get on the register. The result will, therefore, be that as property changes hands, it will gradually be placed on the register, so that in course of time registration of title will become un fait accompli. Secondly: the Bill deals more fully than does the Act of 1875 with the question of possessory titles. There are provisions under which persons with a possessory title may apply for an entry in the register confirming their titles as absolute after the expiration of five years from the date of the publication of certain notices prescribed by the Bill. Thirdly: the creation of an "insurance fund" is provided for by means of the levy of a fee not exceeding a farthing in the pound on the capital value of lands registered. This insurance fund is designed to indemnify any person who has suffered injury from loss of any interest in land owing to the improper registration of any other person in respect thereof. The Bill contains other provisions which will, no doubt, expedite the process of obtaining registration, but to which it will not be necessary to refer here. If the Bill become law, registration can no longer be avoided, but will be a question of time only. The parties who first acquire land after the coming into force of the Bill may, no doubt, be put to some little extra trouble and expense, the benefit of

which their successors-an indeterminate body-will reap. It is therefore to be hoped that the scale of fees incidental to an application for registration will be fixed as low as is possible consistent with the efficient administration of the scheme.

S. AUG. SILLEM.

CHAPTER LXXVI.

THE SETTLEMENT AND ENTAIL OF LAND.

By S. A. SILLEM, BARRISTER-AT-LAW.

A SETTLEMENT of land may be described with sufficient accuracy for the purposes of this chapter as being any instrument under which any land or any estate or interest in land stands for the time being limited to or in trust for any persons by way of succession. The term "settlement," therefore, in this chapter will include not merely a settlement in its popular sense, but also any will the provisions of which are of such a character as to effect a settlement of land as above described. Settlements are generally framed with the two-fold object of keeping the settled land in the hands of the representatives of the family as far as the rules of law will permit, and of making some provision for the younger children of the settler. With regard to the latter object it will, of course, be remembered that freehold lands of inheritance on the intestacy of the owner devolve on the eldest son (subject to the widow's right of dower, if any) to the exclusion of the younger children under what is termed the law of primogeniture. In cases, therefore, where a man's property largely consists of freehold lands of inheritance the extreme importance of some provisions being made by settlement in favour of the younger children scarcely needs demonstration.

Before dealing with the form in which settlements of land are effected, it would be convenient to point out the limitations which the law imposes on the power of an owner of lands of inheritance to tie up or restrict the alienation of those lands. The law always recognised the importance, indeed the necessity, of allowing the landowner to make all proper provisions for his family, and for that purpose allowed him to carve out his property into such estates, to make such limitations, and to create such charges as would attain that object. At the same time the law recognised the extreme public inconvenience which would result were a man allowed to make his lands inalienable by his heirs. With a view, therefore, to limiting the power of a man to deal with his land to the extent necessary to provide for his family, the Courts adopted what is so well known as the "rule against perpetuities." This rule (which is probably as ancient as any in our law) is that no land can be tied up for a longer period than the lives of living persons and 21 years after their deaths. Thus a man may make the following devise - His land to go to his son A for his life, and after A's death to go to A's son (an unborn person) when he attains 21 years. This limitation to A's son at 21 years is valid, because obviously he must attain that age within 21 years of A's death (the period of any possible gestation not being reckoned). But any attempt to exceed that limit would be void, as, for instance, a further limitation of the land to the unborn son of the unborn son of A, inasmuch as the unborn son of the unborn son of A need not necessarily be born within 21 years of the death of A. And on the same principle it may be said generally, that any charge or provision concerning the land to come into effect after the expiration of 21 years from the death of some living

person is void. It should be observed, however, that the law of entail was in early times an exception to the rule against perpetuities. At the present time, however, it can hardly be called an exception, for reasons which will be found below in dealing, as it is now proposed to do, with the question of entail.

The history of the law of entail, or, to use the technical term, of "fee tails," is one not without interest to the student of the growth of our law. It is the history of a struggle between, on the one hand, the land-owning class, anxious to preserve their estates in their families in perpetuity, and, on the other hand, the judges, alive to and anxious to avoid the social evils which would result from the fettering of the free disposition of land. A fee tail is an estate given to a man and the heirs of his body. Mr. Joshua Williams, in his authoritative work on the "Law of Real Property," thus describes its characteristics :-"This is such an estate as will, if left to itself, descend on the decease of the first owner to all his lawful issue, children, grandchildren, and more remote descendants, so long as his posterity endures, in a regular order and course of descent from one to another; and, on the other hand, if the first owner should die without issue, his estate if left alone will then determine." After much conflict between Parliament (in early times, it will be remembered, the monopoly of the landowning class) and the judges, the Statute 13 Edward I., cap. i., called De donis conditionalibus, was passed, which declared that the will of the donor, according to the form in the deed of gift manifestly expressed, should be from thenceforth observed. From that time until the reign of Edward IV. land settled in fee tail seems to have descended from father to son, and to have been practically inalienable. In the 12th Edward IV., how

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