The Sun.
London, England, 1848-06-16 00:00:00

one form, the sanction of the House of Lords. The
policy of the measure has been earnestly advocated by
some of the most reflective commentators upon the
social exigencies of Ireland. Few countries of
Europe present so vast and unwieldy a concentration
of landed property as the sister-country. The prin-
ciples of primogeniture and entail, combined with a
multitude of causes homogeneous to the character of
Irish aristocracy, have so fettered that dominion
which is elsewhere exercised over land, and has so of
fectually obstructed its transfer, as to:place it all but
beyond the pale of exchangeable property. In the
existing state of the law there is no freedom for the
transfer of land, where the interests of its owners and
the welfare of thousands indirectly concerned in its
more divided appropriation and uses are equally in-
volved. Hence it is that the Bill in question has the
rare good fortune for an Irish measure to be favoured
in it 3 scope and policy by all classes of Irishmen.
With all the care, nevertheless, with which the
measure has been framed by the Lord Chancellor,
by whom it was introduced into and conducted
through the Upper House, and the supervision it has
undergone on the part of the law officers since its
introduction into the House of Commons, we behold
in its machinery
anything but appropriate and
effective means for the attainment of the proposed ob•
ject. It is well to replace the dilatory and ruinously
costly course of a bill in equity with its vexatious
train of interlocutory procedures, by a remedy brief,
summary, and comparatively inexpensive; but the
value of promptitude and dispatch, of a direct and
economical path to the desired goal, does not lie in
brevity of procedure alone. The hardships of delay
and the ruin of costs would be averted to no good pur-
pose, if interests which it is the paramount duty of a
court of equity to maintain were overlooked, and
rights which it should sedulously guard were in dan-
ger of being sacrificed.
The Bill has been altered since it left the House of
Lords in a respect which suggests these apprehen-
sions. The power given to the Master by the Bill in
its original form to appoint a solicitor, whose duty it
would be to collect all necessary information for the
guidance of the Court, to watch with a vigilant eya
each step in the proceeding by which the rights of in-
`ants, lunatics, and others, not in a position to take
care of those rights, and to restrain all attempts at
collusive sales between proprietors having but tempo-
rary interests and their debtors ; that salutary power
has been unaccountably withdrawn, and the conse-
uence must be that many of the sales will take
place upon partial information only, or possibly upon
4 representation of the circumstances of the case alto•
;ether deceptive and fraudulent. This is a fearful
consideration, bearing in mind the conclusive nature
of the sales to be effected under the Act, and the im
portant fact that the vendee is to get a dear Parlia
inentary title against every claimant whatever.

The Bill also seems very defective in not requiring
an abstract of title as a foundation of the proceedings
on summary petition before the Master, ratified by
the solicitor's affidavit. Where the proceeding is at
:he instance of the proprietor wishing to be relieved,
there could be no inconvenience in his being required
to furnish such an abstract, and where the petition
is presented by the encumbrancer, the materials for
such an abstract could be procured by interrogatories
in the nature of a bill of discovery.
We utterly distrust the competency of the House
of Commons to make the measure satisfactory. '1 he
subject is essentially professional, and involves tech-
nicalities beyond the comprehension and .kill of
'tatesmen and politicians. The prudent course would
be to refer the matter to the judicial and legal autho-
rities of the country, which the Bill deeply and im-
mediately concerns.