person from being registered with any other title if the registrar is Sect. 20 (3).

satisfied of his title.

(4.) It shall be lawful for Her Majesty in Council to revoke or vary any Order made under this section.

(5.) In the case of every Order proposed to be made under this section, notice shall, six months before the Order is made, be given to the council of the county to which such Order is proposed to be applied. A draft of the proposed Order, together with the name of at least one place within or conveniently near to the county where a district registry office will be established, shall accompany the notice, and shall also be published in the Gazette (o).

(6.) If within three months after receipt of the draft the county council, at a meeting specially called for the purpose, at which twothirds of the whole number of the members shall be present, resolve, and communicate to the Privy Council their resolution, that in their opinion compulsory registration of title would not be desirable in their county, the Order shall not be made (o).

(7.) The first Order made under this section shall not affect more than one county (o).

(8.) Except as to a county or part of a county which shall have signified through the county council of such county, pursuant to a resolution of such council passed at a meeting at which two-thirds of the whole number of the members shall be present, its desire that registration of title shall be compulsorily applied to it, no further Order shall be made under this section, and in any case no further Order shall be made under this section until the expiration of three years from the making of the first Order. Provided that in the case of an Order made under this sub-section the provisions of sub-section (6) shall not apply ( p).

(9.) Every Order of Council made under this section shall, within thirty days from the date thereof, if Parliament be then sitting, or within twenty days from the commencement of the next session, if Parliament be not sitting, be laid on the table of both Houses of Parliament, and if within forty days of any order being so laid an Address in either House disapproving of such order be carried, such Order shall be void and of no effect.

(10.) Any Order made under this section shall be made with due regard to the utilisation (if practicable) of any land registry existing in the county to which compulsory registration is proposed to be applied or in any adjoining county (q).

(0) See last preceding note.

(p) The effect of this section is that the compulsory provisions cannot be applied beyond the area affected by the order of the year 1898 until the year 1901, and then only upon the request of a county council. The compulsory provisions are experimental only.

(4) See note (n) supra.

Sect. 20 (11).

51 & 52 Vict. c. 41.

(11.) For the purposes of this section the word county shall have the same meaning as in the Local Goverment Act, 1888, and shall include a county borough; and the word county council shall include the council of such borough (r).

(12.)—(i.) In the event of any portion of a county or part of a county as regards which an Order has been made under this section being included in another county or in a county borough as regards which no Order has been made under this section, such Order shall cease to be in force within such included portion of the county,

(ii.) In the event of any portion of a county or part of a county as regards which no Order has been made under this section being included in another county or in a county borough as regards which an Order has been made under this section, such Order shall apply to such included portion of the county (s).

21.

PART IV.
Miscellaneous.

(t).

Provision for

the Yorkshire registries of deeds.

22.

* (20).

23. (1.) At any time after the passing of this Act, and subject to the provisions of section twenty of this Act, the Lord Chancellor may enter into an agreement with the county council of any of

(r) "County" is not defined by the Local Government Act, 1888, except as not including the county of a city or county of a town, ante, p. 171; apparently the reference in the text is to the definition in that Act, s. 100, of "administrative county," unte, p. 172. It has been doubted whether an order making registration of title compulsory can be made as to the city of London: but if "county" in this Act be taken to mean administrative county it seems that such an order may be made, for the "metropolis" (which includes the city) is an administrative county. See Local Government Act, 1888, s. 40 (1), ante, p. 88, and definition of" metropolis" ib. s. 100, ante, p. 172. It will be observed that the city of London is dealt with in the draft order referred to, ante, p. 744, note (n).

(s) This section provides for the alteration of the area of compulsory registration in cases where the boundaries of a county or borough affected by an order under this section are altered, as they may be under s. 54 of the Local Government Act, 1888, ante, p. 108.

(t) Section 21 relates to the creation of an insurance fund for providing indemnity in cases of error, etc., in the Land Registry.

(u) Section 22 relates mainly to the making of rules and regulations and fee orders under this Act and the Land Transfer Act, 1875. The rules in force at the moment of writing this note are those of December 24th, 1875, January 1st, 1889, and November 23rd, 1891, as modified by the Provisional Land Transfer Rules, 1897, made under both Acts at the end of the year 1897, and set out 42 Sol. J. 146. But general rules under both Acts have been prepared by the rule committee appointed under this section, and will shortly come into force; a draft of these rules appears in the Weekly Notes, April 30th, 1898. They do not appear to make any special provision for the registration of title to Small Holdings or to rescind the Land Registry (Small Holdings) Rules, 1892; but these last mentioned rules appear to require some revision so as to bring them into accordance with the provisions of s. 19 of this Act, ante, p. 743.

the three ridings of Yorkshire for the transfer of the business of Sect. 23 (1). the local deed registry established in that riding to the office of land registry (a).

c. 64.

(2.) The agreement shall be drawn up in accordance with the principles of sections one, three, and four of the Land Registry 54 & 55 Vict. (Middlesex Deeds) Act, 1891 (y), which provided for the transfer of the Middlesex registry of deeds to the land registry, and shall, after approval by the Treasury, take effect accordingly.

(3.) The whole of the property, assets, and liabilities of the county council, in relation to the local registry, shall be included in the transfer, and shall be taken over by the State at a price to be specified in or ascertained under the terms of the agreement, but no sum shall be payable for compensation in respect of any future loss of fees consequent upon such transfer.

(4.) Unless and until an agreement as aforesaid is concluded the county council may from time to time, at intervals of five years, in the event of their suffering loss, owing to the business of the local registry being diminished by reason of the principal Act and this Act, apply to the Treasury for compensation, and the Treasury shall award such compensation accordingly.

(5.) The compensation shall be made by the payment of a capital sum to the county fund to be determined in case of dispute by arbitration in the usual way on the basis of the receipts and expenditure in respect of the local registry during the three years previous to the claim being made, and that the county fund shall not be placed in a worse financial position by the operation of the Act.

(6.) All payments under this section shall be made out of moneys to be provided by Parliament.

24. (1.) All hereditaments, corporeal and incorporeal, shall Interpretabe deemed land within the meaning of the principal Act and tion. this Act, except that nothing in this Act shall render compulsory the registration of the title to an incorporeal hereditament, or to mines or minerals apart from the surface, or to a lease having less than forty years to run or two lives yet to fall in, or to an undivided share in land, or to freeholds intermixed and indistinguishable from lands of other tenure, or to corporeal hereditaments parcel of a manor, and included in a sale of the manor as such.

(2.) In this Act the expression "personal representative" means an executor or administrator.

(x) As to the Yorkshire registries of deeds (which must not be confounded with registries for registration of titles under the Land Transfer Acts, 1875 and 1897), see Local Government Act, 1888, s. 46 (4) and note ante, pp. 100, 101. (y) The sections referred to provide for the transfer of the Middlesex registry of deeds to the Land Registry for the vesting in Her Majesty for the public service of the registers and other property of the Middlesex registry, and for the taking over of necessary officers and for pensions, allowances, etc.

Sect. 25. Commence

ment of Act. Short title

25. This Act shall come into operation on the first day of January one thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight.

26. This Act may be cited as the Land Transfer Act, 1897, and and construc- shall be construed as one with the principal Act, and that Act and this Act may be cited together as the Land Transfer Acts, 1875 and 1897.

tion.

SCHEDULES (2).

(*) The First Schedule contains minor amendments of the Land Transfer Act, 1875; the Second Schedule gives a scale of registration fees to be paid in districts where registration is compulsory; this scale is, however, liable to alteration by the rule committee.

Orders, Circulars, and other Official Documents relating to the powers and duties of County Councils.

ADJUSTMENT.

The following is the final report of the Commissioners appointed under the Local Government Act, 1888 (s. 61, ante, p. 118).

To the Queen's Most Excellent Majesty.

May it please Your Majesty,

WE, the Commissioners appointed under the Local Government Act, 1888, desire humbly to present to Your Majesty a report of our proceedings in executing the several duties laid upon us by that Act and by subsequent legislation.

The duties laid upon us by the Local Government Act were as follows:

(1.) To make equitable adjustments respecting the distribution of the proceeds of the Local Taxation Licences and Probate Duty Grant, and respecting all other financial relations between the county boroughs specified in the Third Section to the Act and the counties in which, for the purposes of the Act, they were respectively deemed to be situate, should such adjustments not have been made by agreement between the several county and borough councils within twelve months after April 1st, 1889.

(2.) To determine, until final adjustments were made, the proportions in which the payments out of the Local Taxation Account were to be made to such counties and county boroughs.

(3.) In default of agreement, to determine the number of members of the council of a county borough which should be members of the visiting committee of a county lunatic asylum, or to make a new arrangement in respect to any such county asylum, should any of the contributory councils desire it, and the other council or councils refuse to agree to the same.

(4.) In default of agreement between the respective county councils, to apportion the property, debts, and liabilities of the