THE THE VENDOR AND PURCHASER ACT, 1874, THE LAND CHARGES REGISTRATION AND SEARCHES ACT, 1888, THE TRUST INVESTMENT ACT, 1889, THE MARRIED WOMEN'S PROPERTY ACT, 1882, AND THE SETTLED LAND ACTS, 1882 TO 1890, WITH NOTES AND RULES OF COURT. BY EDWARD PARKER WOLSTENHOLME, M.A., OF LINCOLN'S INN, BARRISTER, one of the CONVEYANCING COUNSEL OF THE COURT; AND WILFRED BRINTON, M.A., OF THE INNER TEMPLE, BARRISTER-AT-LAW. SIXTH EDITION. London: WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 27, FLEET STREET. PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION. SINCE the last edition of this work was issued, three Sessions of Parliament have closed without any Land Transfer Bill being passed, and it is not likely that the last Session of the present Parliament will trouble itself with any such Bill. In the meantime all efforts to further amend the existing law in any other mode, have unfortunately been paralysed. It should be recognised that the long and complicated Bills introduced in previous Sessions are at the most experiments, and cannot, even if successful, supersede the present state of things for many years to come. The effect of improvements in existing law would be immediately felt, as has been proved in the case of the Acts contained in this volume. November, 1891. PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. THE Conveyancing Acts and the Settled Land Acts have now been in force for a time sufficient to render it no longer necessary to illustrate their operation by precedents of deeds. Therefore the Precedents contained in the previous editions of the two books on the Conveyancing Acts and Settled Land Acts are omitted and both sets of Acts with the notes are included in the present volume, leaving the Precedents to be issued at a future day as a separate volume. When the Bills for these Acts were first introduced in 1880, many zealous advocates of reform in the Land Laws objected that the proposed enactments were only amendments of an old and cumbrous system, and that an entirely new system must be substituted. Nine years have passed and no new system has yet been established or appears likely to be established. The most perfected new system, namely, that introduced by Lord Cairns' Act of 1875, and upon which the recent Government Bills have been modelled, was a failure as regards extensive usefulness, not because there was any indisposition to adopt it, for it has been adopted in many cases where suitable, but because it did not answer the general requirements of Landowners. In the recent Bills it was sought to hide failure by resorting to compulsion, and |