Judicial Proceedings .—In England registrars are attached to the privy council, the Supreme Court, and the county courts. In the Queen’s Bench Division (except in its bankruptcy jurisdiction) the duty of registrars is performed by the masters. Besides exercising limited judicial authority, registrars are responsible for the drawing ־up and recording of various stages of the proceedings from the petition, writ, or plaint to the final decision. With them are filed affidavits, depositions, pleadings, &c., when such filing is necessary. The difference between filing and registration is that the documents filed are filed without alteration, while only an epitome is usually registered. The Judicature Act, 1873, created district registries in the chief towns, the district registrar having an authority similar to that of a registrar of the Supreme Court. In the Admiralty Division cases of account are usually referred to the registrar and merchants. The registration in the central office of the supreme court of judgments affecting lands, writs of execution, recognizances, and litespendentes in England, and the registration in Scotland of abbreviates of adjudications and of inhibitions, are governed by special legislation. All these are among the incumbrances for which search is made on investigating a title. Their satisfaction and discharge is also registered. The Conveyancing Act, 1882, provides for a certificate by the proper officer of the existence or non-existence of entries of judgments, deeds, and other matters or documents made in the central office. The certificate is conclusive in favour of a purchaser. Decisions of criminal courts are said to be recorded, not registered, except in the case of courts of summary jurisdiction, in which, by the Summary Jurisdiction Act, 1879, a register of convictions is kept. Probates of ־wills and letters of administration, which are really judicial decisions, are registered in the principal or district registries of the Probate Division. In Scotland registration'is used for giving a summary remedy on obligations without action by means of the fiction of a judicial decision having been given establishing the obligation. A clause of registration is introduced in deeds importing obligation. The various registers available for this kind, of registraton will be found in Watson, Law Diet., s.v. “ Registration.”

Land. —Registration in its relation to land is either of title or of assurances. A register of title bears on the face of it the name and description of a plot of land with more or less particularity, the name of the owner, and the charges and easements to which the land is subject. No one can go behind the entry except in case of fraud. A register of assurances or deeds contains only a copy of documents affecting title, or a memorial qr other epitome of such documents, without any authentication of the title as such. Thus a register of title would show that A was owner subject to a mortgage to B, and the purchaser would purchase such a title. A register of assurances would show in the same circumstances that a conveyance had been made to A, and that subsequently A had mortgaged to B, but the purchaser would have to make sure for himself that A and B had the right to convey and mortgage. It will be obvious that the object of registration of deeds is quite different from that of registration of title. The former aims at facilitating the search for incumbrances, the latter at abolishing search by making it unnecessary. The requisites of a registry of title are thus stated by Sir H. Maine ( Early Law and Custom, 353):—

“The land registries which have the highest commendation from judicial writers are those of certain small Teutonic communities, e.g., the state of Htsse-Darmstadt and the Swiss canton of Zurich. I can here give hut a brief description of the mechanism. The land of the community is divided into a number of circumscriptions of no great area. For each of these a central office is established, with a staff of functionaries who are to some extent experts, and at eacli office a register is opened in which separate portions or groups of pages are appropriated to separate masses of land . . . When the register has once been opened, the legal history of every parcel of every area is thenceforward recorded in it, and every transfer or mortgage must be registered in it, under pain of invalidity. Whether a person wishing to sell or mortgage has the right to do so, it is the business of the staff of experts to ascertain. It is absolutely essential to the system that the register should be easily accessible, and the formalities of registration simple and cheap.”

It will appear on referring to Real Estate that before the Conquest publicity of transfer was secured by a system of record in the sliire-book or church-book. After the Conquest this publicity, continued for a time in the Domesday survey, from various causes gradually gave way to that secrecy of transfer which is now one of the peculiar features of English law. Publicity was to a certain extent secured by the court rolls in the case of copyhold lands, by the local statutes mentioned below, and by the Act enforcing the registration of rent charges and annuities charged on land (18 Vict. c. 15). There was a tendency in the same direction in those statutes which made the enrolment of deeds necessary for their validity. Such are the Statute of Enrolments, 27 Henry VIII. c. 16, the Mortmain Act, 9 Geo. II. c. 36, the Fines and Recoveries Act, 3 & 4 Will. IV. c. 74, under which an estate tail may be barred by an enrolled deed, ard Acts affecting Queen Anne’s Bounty, 1 Geo. I., st. 2, c. 10, and the Charity Commissioners, 18 & 19 Viet, c. 124. No general registry has as yet been established in England, though many attempts have been made in that direction. The question was debated as far back as the Long Parliament. General Ludlow mentions the characteristic incident “that upon the debate of ‘ registering deeds in each county for want of which, within a certain time fixed after the sale, such sales should be void, and, being so regarded, that lands should not be subject to any incumbrance,’ this word incumbrance was so managed that it took up three months’ time before it could be ascertained by the committee” ( Memoirs , i. 436). In the reign of Charles II. a registry of deeds was established for the Bedford Level by 15 Car. II. c. 17. I n the reign of Anne registries of deeds and wills were established for the county of Middlesex (7 Anne c. 20), for the West Riding of Yorkshire (2 & 3 Anne c. 4), and for the East Riding and Kingston-upon-Hull (6 Anne c. 35). Similar provisions were not applied to the North Riding until 8 Geo. II. c. 6. The Yorkshire Acts were consolidated and amended by the Yorkshire Registries Act, 1884. “Under these Acts, all deeds are to be adjudged fraudulent and void against any subsequent purchaser or mortgagee for valuable consideration, unless a memorial of such deeds be duly registered before the registering of the memorial of the deed under which such subsequent purchaser or mortgagee shall claim” (Williams, Real Property, pt. i. ch. x.). Priority thus depends upon the date of registration. The Acts do not extend to copyholds, to leaseholds for a term not exceeding twenty-one years, or to chambers in an Inn of Court. The full operation of the Registry Acts has been to a certain extent affected by the doctrines of equity that an equitable mortgage by deposit of deeds is valid without registration, and that notice of a prior unregistered deed is within limits equivalent to registration. “It shall only be in cases where the notice is so clearly proved as to make it fraudulent in the purchaser to take and register a conveyance in prejudice to the known title of another that we will suffer the registered deed to be affected” (Sir William Grant in Wyatt v. Barwell, 19 Vesey’s Reports, 438). On this subject the Yorkshire Registries Act, 1884, provides by § 14 that “all priorities given by this Act shall have full effect in all cases except in cases of actual fraud, and all persons claiming thereunder any legal or equitable interests shall be entitled to corresponding priorities, and no such person shall lose any such priority merely in consequence of his having been affected with actual or constructive notice, except in cases of actual fraud. ” The Act provides for an official search of the same nature as that introduced by the Conveyancing Act, 1882, and for the entry of a caveat against registration ·by any person interested. Passing to general registration, a general registry of deeds was recommended by the real property commissioners in 1830. The royal commission of 1854 reported in 1857 in favour of general registration of title. In pursuance of this report the Land Registry Act, 1862 (“Lord Westbury’s Act”), was passed. It provided for the optional registration of such titles to freeholds and leaseholds in freeholds as a court of equity should hold to be marketable. It was of little importance in practice on account of its making a marketable title ( i.e., such a title as the court would compel an unwilling purchaser to accept) and a definition of boundaries necessary, and of its not giving an indefeasible title in effect, though it does so in name, until there had been dealing with the land for valuable consideration subsequent to registration. The Act is still law as to titles registered under it and not reregistered under the Act of 1875. On the same day as the Land Registry Act was passed the Declaration of Title Act, 1862, under which power is given to any person entitled to apply for the registration of an indefeasible title under the Land Registry Act to apply to the Court of Chancery for a declaration of title, and the court, on proof of a marketable title, is to issue a certificate of title under the seal of the court. The Land Registry Act was condemned by the report of a royal commission in 1870. In 1875 some of the recommendations of the commission were adopted in the Land Transfer Act, 1875 (“Lord Cairns’s Act”), the latest general enactment on the subject. The Act of 1875 allows the optional registration of a title less than marketable, and the land certificate delivered to the proprietor is to state whether his title be absolute, qualified, or possessory. Two or more persons may be registered as joint proprietors. No notice of any trust is to appear on the register. To be registered land must be either freehold or leasehold for an unexpired term of at least twenty-one years. Land in Middlesex or Yorkshire registered under the Act ceases to be within the jurisdiction of the local registries. A caution against registration may be lodged by any person interested. The Act established an office of land registry under a registrar appointed by the lord chancellor. There was also a power of creating district registries, if necessary. The Act, like its predecessor, lias been very little used. A compulsory system of registration of title in England has been so universally recognized as expedient that its adoption can only be a question of time. The chief difficulties in the way of a reform are the objection of the landowners to publicity of transactions in land, the expense, greater than in other countries or in the colonies, arising from the complexity of the English law of real property, and, not least, the conservative instincts of the legal profession. One effect of registration will be to much diminish the importance of the legal doctrines of Possession and Limitation ( q.v .). “It is a grave question whether the establishment of titles by long possession is consistent with a complete and efficient system of registration. In Scotland, where there is such a system, there is nothing answering to our Statute of Limitations as regards land” (Pollock, Land Laws, 169).

Another effect will be the recurrence to the primitive legal conception of the transfer of land as a matter of public notoriety. In Ireland a registry of assurances was established by 6 Anne c. 2 (Ir.). 28 & 29 Vict. c. 88 constitutes a limited registry of title in the record of title to land which has been the subject of conveyance or declaration by the Landed Estates Court. In Scotland the present system of registration of assurances has existed since the reign of James YI. The Act 1617 c. 16 created a public register for registering within three-score days instruments of sasine as well as reversions and other writs affecting heritable property. The Act established a general register of sasines at Edinburgh and local registers. The latter were abolished by 31 & 32 Vict. c. 64. Modern Acts commencing in 1845 and consolidated in 1868 by 31 & 32 Vict. c. 101 dispense with sasine and the instrument of sasine. The recording of a conveyance with a warrant of registration indorsed now constitutes infeftment. Either the whole or part of a deed may be registered. Probative leases of thirty-one or more years may be registered under 20 & 21 Viet, c. 26. As to entails see Entail. Writs affecting land held in burgage before 1874 must be registered in the burgh register of sasines (37 & 38 Vict. c. 94, § 25). The lord clerk register’s duties under the Act of 1617 were transferred to the deputy clerk register by 42 & 43 Vict. c. 44 (see Watson, Law Diet., s.vv. “Deeds,” “Registration”). In most of the British colonies land registration of some kind exists. The Indian Registration Act, 1866, steers a middle course between compulsory and optional registration. The registration of some assurances is compulsory, of others optional. In Australia a system of compulsory registration of title was introduced by Sir R. R. Torrens, and, after having been first adopted by the legislature of South Australia in 1858, has been generally applied by the other Australian colonies since that time. Under the South Australian Act a certificate of title is cancelled and regranted on transfer. Instruments are not effectual until registration and indorsement according to statutory forms. Mortgages have priority according to the date of registration, irrespective of notice. The registrar may demand the deposit of a map. In the United States registration of assurances is universal, but registration of title is not so generally adopted. At the date of writing, a bill for the compulsory registration of title is before the New York legislature. For the purpose of dealing with public lands of the United States a register of the land office is appointed in each land district. Returns from each land office are made to the general land office.

Ships .—The registration of ships in the British empire (other than fishing boats, the registration of which is governed by special legislation) now depends upon the Merchant Shipping Acts. The register is open only to British ships, and not more than sixty-four persons can be registered as owners of any ship. One registered owner may, however, represent the beneficial title of any number of persons. No notice of a trust can be entered on the register. Mortgages must be registered in the statutory form in order to be good against registered transferees and mortgagees. The registrar is generally in the United Kingdom the principal officer of customs for any port, abroad such person as may be named by order in council. The Merchant Shipping Act, 1854, established a “general register and record of seamen” under a registrar-general of seamen. The Merchant Shipping Act, 1872, extended both the name and authority of this officer. Since that Act he has been called the registrar-general of shipping and seamen. Returns of shipping and seamen are transmitted to him by the local registrars. In the United States the registration of ships depends upon a series of Acts of Congress beginning in 1792. See Revised Statutes, § 4131. A register of seamen is kept by the shipping commissioner (Act of 7th June 1872, c. 322).

Bills of Sale .—By the Bills of Sale Acts, 1878 and 1882, every bill of sale is to be registered within seven clear days after the execution thereof, or, if it is executed in any place out of England, then within seven clear days after the time at which it would in the ordinary course of post arrive in England if posted immediately after execution. A bill must be re-registered every five years, if still existing. An affidavit of the time of its execution, of its due execution and attestation, and containing a description of the residence and occupation of the person making the bill and of every attesting witness, must be filed with the registrar within seven days. A transfer or assignment of a registered bill of sale need not be registered. The duties of registrar are performed by a master of the Supreme Court attached to the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court of Justice. Provision is made for the transmission of bills of sale made by persons or affecting goods outside the London bankruptcy district to the registrars of the proper county courts. The register may be searched by any person on payment of a fee of one shilling. Similar provisions are contained in the Irish Acts of 1879 and 1883. Bills of sale are unknown in Scotland.

Births, Baptisms, Marriages, Deaths, Burials .—The registration of baptisms, marriages, and burials is said to have been first introduced by Thomas Cromwell when vicar-general in 1522, but it is only in comparatively modern times that the registration lias been fully carried out. The registration of births, kc., in the United Kingdom depends upon a large body of statutory law. Baptisms, marriages, and burials are usually registered at the time of their occurrence, births and deaths within a certain time afterwards. The English Act 35 k 36 Vict. c. 36 forbids the charging of any fee for registration of baptism. The law of registration of births and deaths is consolidated for England by 37 & 38 Yict. c. 88, for Ireland by •43 k 44 Vict. c. 13. In Scotland it depends upon 17 & 18 Vict. c. 80, as amended by later Acts. The registration of marriages in England depends chiefly upon 4 Geo. IV. c. 76, and 6 & 7 Will. IV. c. 85; in Ireland upon 7 & 8 Vict. c. 81 (as to Protestants), 26 & 27 Vict. c. 90 (as to Roman Catholics); in Scotland upon 17 k 18 Vict. c. 80. The chief official charged with the administration of the Acts is the registrar-general of births, deaths, and marriages; in Scotland the office is held by the deputy clerk-register. In the United States the registration of births, marriages, and deaths is, with a few exceptions such as births and deaths at sea and marriages abroad, the subject of State and not United States legislation. Burials are regulated in England by the Burial Acts, especially the Registration of Burials Act, 1864, in Scotland by 18 k 19 Vict. c. 68. Chapels belonging to nonconformist bodies may be certified to the registrar-general (see Nonconformity). There are few enactments dealing with the subject of this paragraph which extend to the United Kingdom. Those which do so are of a special nature, such as Acts affecting friendly societies and officers and soldiers abroad. A Registration Act embracing the U nited Kingdom is much needed.

Companies .nder the Companies Act, 1862, and subsequent Companies Acts (most of which apply to the United Kingdom), commercial companies as distinguished from associations of other kinds must be registered. Any company requiring to be registered and not registered is an illegal association, and its members cannot take advantage of the...