I. The Property Acts of 1925. Edited by W. H. AGGS. (Chitty's Statutes of Practical Utility, Vol. 23). Sweet & Maxwell.

1925.

2. Carson's Real Property Statutes. Third Edition by H. W. LAW. Sweet & Maxwell. 1927.

OR the last two years at least, when two or three lawyers have been gathered together, there has been one dominant subject of conversation. To name the subject is unnecessary. Elderly practitioners have expressed their views upon the necessity of re-learning the law at their time of life in no uncertain language; some have roundly declared that they do not intend to do so, but to rely upon sons or other youthful auxiliaries. Lincoln's Inn itself indulged in a belated controversy upon the "vocation of our age for legislation " a month or so before the Acts came into operation; but, as one learned writer pointed out, there was really no controversy as to 90 per cent. of the new law; it was limited to the remaining 10 per cent. So the bells that rang in the new year of 1926 rang in likewise the new Property Acts. New books of precedents, guides, treatises, and articles of all kinds have appeared and are continuing to appear; a perfect avalanche of lectures descended on all parts of the country; and the legal profession generally are continuing to do their business in the hope that they are not making too many mistakes for their successors to correct.

This is neither the place nor the occasion to discuss the practical difficulties of lawyers, nor, at any length, the technicalities of the legislation. The greatest trouble has been occasioned by the Settled Land Act. The experience of more than a year's working has proved that this statute must be drastically amended if persons of moderate means are not to be saddled with large and unnecessary expenses. It is said that a practical conveyancer expressed his considered opinion of that Act in one word—a word frequently used by His Majesty's Forces during the late war, but not often used by practical conveyancers. The trouble is that the eminent persons who constructed the legislation

framed a coherent scheme, but they were thinking all the time in terms of stately mansions and broad acres; they could not bring themselves to think in terms of workmen's cottages and small holdings. But unfortunately the legislation extends to the workman's cottage just as it does to the stately mansion. The worst difficulty arises from the provision that if the land is settled land the persons who hold the beneficial interests in it-the owners, in other words cannot make a title to it without making use of the elaborate machinery of the Act, executing a vesting deed and appointing trustees. The resulting expenses may be comparatively negligible in the case of a large estate; they may be a very serious matter in the case of a small property. The present writer had experience recently of a cottage property which the beneficial owners had agreed to sell for £400. Before 1926 the transaction could easily have been effected by one deed. But, because of the provisions of the Settled Land Act, 1925, an elaborate application to the court was necessary at a cost of from £40 to £50, just to enable the owners to sell their own property. Things of that kind can only be characterised as an absolute scandal. However, our present object is not to be practical, but to offer a few observations on the spirit underlying this great piece of legislation.

Of the immense changes that it has effected there can be no question. It may be, as Professor Holdsworth has argued, that the changes in the actual structure of the land law are not as deep or as revolutionary as those effected by the Tudor legislation, but in bulk and diversity the new Acts exceed every previous effort of this character. The law of tenures has been reduced to a thing of nought, copyholds have gone, and with them all local customs; there is no sich person as the heir-at-law; there is a new code of intestacy, applying to all property real and personal, the like whereof has never before existed; and all this in addition to the complete recasting of the law of property itself. There can be no manner of doubt that our generation, which has seen the greatest war in history, has also seen the greatest reform of the law of property.

This mass or burden of reforming and consolidating legislation covers more than 700 pages of the Statute Book. The question arises whether it is a heterogeneous heap of unrelated details, a clearing-up of ancient rubbish, and an adaptation of the law to

the social and political conditions of the times; or whether it can be regarded as the detailed embodiment of a dominant principle. Assuredly it is most of these things. The details are certainly not unrelated. The greatest care has been taken by the draftsmen and the supervisory committees to dovetail the various statutes together, and to make them an organic whole. An enormous mass of old statutes has been swept away, sometimes completely, sometimes only to be re-enacted in modern form. The new law is intended to fit the social and political conditions of the present time, but that does not explain its full import. Running through it is a dominant principle or an historical tendency, whichever it may best be called.

The history of the various periods at which the land law of this country has been reformed was traced by the master-hand of Professor Holdsworth in the Law Quarterly Review for April, 1926. His paper proved that from the beginning of legislation in the thirteenth century there has been a series of efforts to reform the law, inspired by economic and political views that were prominent at the different times. For our present purpose it is not necessary to go so far back, though it might be quite possible to do so. It is sufficient to say that from the beginning of the industrial revolution in the latter-half of the eighteenth century there have existed two views of property in land, fundamentally different in principle and outlook and generally opposed in practice. They may be called the urban or mercantile view, and the rural or agricultural view respectively.

The essence of the urban view is that it regards land as a commodity or an investment, and nothing more. It is a necessary pre-requisite for trade or manufacture, or a safe and permanent investment for surplus funds. This may be illustrated by the procedure of a business man setting up a new business in a town. He requires a site for a factory, a warehouse, or a shop. He considers the advantages and the drawbacks of the various available positions from the standpoint of transport facilities by rail, road, or water, the supply of labour, the proximity of housing accommodation for workers, and so forth, and makes his decision upon these grounds. Again he may require shops or offices, and he will require a residence for himself. In all his comings and goings he will look upon the land as a means of effecting his ulterior purpose. His efforts will be directed to securing it by purchase or lease as

cheaply as possible, and to effecting its transfer to himself with a minimum of expense and a maximum of speed. Then, if he wishes to sell, his views as to transferring the business and its appurtenances to a new owner will be precisely the same.

Even in the event of an investment of surplus funds the views of a man of urban mind will be similar. He will know, or if he does not know already he will very soon find out, that the return upon landed property considered as an investment is a very low Nevertheless it is safe and permanent. "The land cannot run away," and even yet the possession of a landed estate carries a certain social prestige. But assuredly he will regard it as an investment yielding tangible and intangible returns, an investment and nothing but an investment. He will balance it in his own mind against an investment of a like sum in War Loan or other securities and will treat the one as transferable into the other at will. Looking at the matter in this way, he will be impatient of all difficulties and delays in the transfer of land. His ideal will be expressed-it always is expressed-in the words that land should be transferable as easily as stocks and shares.

The point of view of the country mouse is quite different. The rural mind regards land as a possession, not a commodity; as the one substantial foundation of life, not as an investment to be changed at will; as the perfection of all things, not a mere means to other ends. The agriculturalist is quite willing to buy land within the limit of his means, for all agricultural countries are affected by land hunger in a greater or lesser degree, but to sell the land is a calamity. It is not a mere change of investment, it is tearing up the family by the roots. The rural family is devoted to the soil, its whole being is sunk deep in it, it can hardly envisage existence apart from it, its ideal is that son should succeed father in infinite succession.

It is a perverse error to suppose that this feeling is confined to the great landlords. It is just as strong in the cottager who reckons his land by the square perch, as in the magnate who reckons his by the square mile; in fact, land hunger is often stronger in a peasant community than in any other. The landed people themselves recognise that the feeling pervades them all— it is for this reason that there is greater solidarity in rural societies than in those of other types. The practice on all the great estates is that, on the death of a tenant, a son or near relative is always

allowed to succeed to the holding in preference to any stranger. Even within his own limited experience the present writer knows of tenancies that have remained in the same families for 200 to 300 years. It is well for the townsman with his love of change and movement to ponder these things-a yearly tenancy, subject in law to six months' notice on either side, yet lasting for 300 years, from the Civil War to the Great War, from the building of St. Paul's to the erection of Wembley. Can a greater picture of stability be conceived?

Facility of alienation does not present itself to the rural mind as a thing much to be desired. The last thing that the possessor of land wishes to do is to sell it, and if on the occasion of a purchase he finds the necessary ceremonial somewhat cumbersome, rather picturesque, and decidedly costly, it is no great matter. It is done once and for all, and thereafter the land will remain for him and his son and his son's son and succeeding descendants so long as the family remains. He quite tolerates, in fact he rather likes, strict entails, elaborate family settlements, portions, charges, annuities, the incidents of copyhold and all the other bugbears of the urban conveyancer. Utterly repugnant to a quick moving mercantile community, they are within reasonable limits rather precious to a stable, slow-moving agricultural community.

The conflict between these two tendencies has dominated the history of English land law from the industrial revolution to the present day. Especially has it done so from the middle of the nineteenth century, because it was then that the full fruits of the industrial revolution began to be gathered, it was then that for the first time the urban outlook began to predominate over the rural. The judicious reader will be able to notice many traces of the antinomy in earlier times, during the Commonwealth and the Restoration, in the Tudor legislation, and even in the Edwardian era. It is not necessary for our present purpose to go back so far, but the position during the nineteenth century, as in the earlier periods, is admirably illustrated in Professor Holdsworth's lecture.

He points out that the reform legislation of the 'thirties" did nothing directly in the direction of assimilating the law of real and personal property," and that Bagehot, when writing his English Constitution," just before the second Reform Act of 1867, observed that the landed gentry far surpassed any other VOL. 246. NO. 501.