Fort Worth gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1891-1898, 1892-03-06

your declining age, where good laws will
protect you, and none-forgetting the heirs
! of Boots-shall modest or make you afraid.
| Come; though you be strangers without
the gates, yet the hospitable doors of Texas
will be open to you and you shall be taken
| in" And though this final promise be in
| deed yea and amen, yet the stranger some
! times finds Delphian favor about 1t that
| he he'd not eXpected-the oracle having
been so long silent.
In the language of a candidate for the
| chief magistracy of Texas, as it appears in
TIE GAZETTE now before me- ''they (the
| people of Texas possesses for the inheri-
| tance of their children an imperial domain,
ripening for development and painting for
| healthy progress" While the casual
reader. not candidate for gubernatorial
honors, may not have thought of our i'm
| perial domain as painting, yet this figure of
speech ernbodies, and very foroi0ly presents,
the facts of the simultaneously
! that too often our children's
inheritance proves in law to be
an heritage for the heirs of Boots, even
to the third and fourth generation; and too
often, as the children enter upon its actual
enjoyment, they find that technical defects
have clustered around and over its title
thick as the poisonous ivy over graveyard
walls. The progress for which our domain
is painting is 10 be looSed from these letters,
and TO be freed from the shadow of Boots,
whose ghost the magic of legislative
wisdom has not yet served to lay.
1t would seem to specially behoove Texas
not merely to keep abreast with, but even
to lead the current reforms in matters of
this kind. In older and populous sections
land constitutes a less proportion of the
states wealth, and the laws affecting Its
titles need less of legislative attention and
reform, because of less diversities and
changes the conditions of population, bust
ness productions and the like being more
homogeneous, the precedents of decided
law fuller and longer settled, conveyances
less frequent, and the lands nearly all in
actual possession, so that the statutes of
limitation have full effect In perfecting de-
fciencies. Yet, such states as New York,
Missouri, Massachusetts and others are
inaugurating reforms and making decided
Improvements in this direction, while our
domain is painting in vain. In New York,
the agitation for reform has resulted in the
improved "block SYSTEM for lands in the
city of New York, and in various improve
ments in the forms of deeds and mortgages
and the system of recording which remove
many dificulties that rendered titles uncer-
tain and conveyancing costly. The legis-
lature of Massachusetts has a committee
examining into the merits of the Australian
and other land reform systems; and the
new code of Missouri (1SS9) sweeps away
the pestilential technicalities of privy ac-
acknowledgement, and materially simplifes
nearly all the forms connected with con-
veyanclng and the methods of procedure
affecting lands. In other countries the land
law reform has been carried yet further
and in Australia, Prussia, Bavaria and
Canada it has been successfully demon
strated that the transfer of land can be
rendered almost Us simple, certain and in
expensive as the transfer of share of rail-
way, bank or factory stock. In those
countries the heavy costs of conyeyancinC
and record, and the uncertainties of docu-
mentary titles are almost entirely avoided,
and deeds are not used except in rare cases,
q public registry Of each title is kept, and
when the owner OF the land appears
before the keeper Of the registry and has
entered thereon the simple statement that
he has col. veyed that land to another per-
son there named, the transfer is complete,
without single whereas or allusion TO
the awe-inspiring Entertainments and APP
performances thereunto appertaining and be-
longing"
Whether the legislation of Texas has kept
pace with even the absolute demands of her
purely local conditions, the reader can
Judge. The greater portion, or nearly q
hundred millions of acres OF our inheritance
was for a long series of years, as much of
it is yet, situated in unorganized counties.
Many of these counties were created and
titles issued for the lands lying in them.
nearly forty years ago, with the number
steadily increasing each year, yet it was
not until 1851 that any general statute was
passed clearly specifying where deeds and
conveyances of these titled lands should be
recorded. The place Of record was left TO
suppositiou and conjecture. and the ques-
ton as to where the recording should have
been done did not reach the supreme court
until year or two since. Now il is found
that nearly all the recording for these I'M
organized counties was done upon q wrong
theory and supposition; and half century
of litigation will not suffice to remove al
the evils resulting from this deficiency,
without the aid OF more effective legisla-
ton as to titles than the statute now
affords The writer recalls seeing. II 1875,
in one Of the border organized counties a
dozen large and costly record books, pro-
vided at public expense for recording con-
veyances of lands lying in the dozen unor-
ganized counties then attached to that
county. Those dozen volumes, together
with hundreds of others, are now like the
world before its creation, without form and
void; and the owners OF perhaps millions of
acres are afioat on sea of uncertainty.
their witnesses dead and their original title