The Westport Times. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 1873.

Westport Times, Volume VII, Issue 1107, 16 September 1873, Page 2

The Westport Times. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 1873.

Among the multiplicity of reports presented to the Assembly, having reference to what has been termed fancy legislation, that of the Registrar General of land must be very favorably viewed. The Land Transfer Act, passed for the purpose of facilitating the method of dealing with landed property, and clear. ing up unsatisfactory titles, assimilating the method of transferring real property to that of personal, has now stood its trial, and the steady increase of work in the department, having under its control the special exercise of the functions created by the Act, proves that the public ha c learnt to repose confidence rh'Tein. According to the report of the Registrar General, it appears that the receipts of the department during the past year, ending June 1873, have increased nbout sixty-five per cent, while the increase in expenditure has been immaterial, and during the last three months of the financial year the receipts of the department have covered a 1 expences. So far the predictions very f i-oely ventured when Mr Moorehouse first initiated the business of the department —that in dealing with real estate confusion worse confounded would surely ensue, and that the public would never place confidence in a system aimed at the very uprooting of time honored custom and legal precedent —have all come to naught, the Government Ga>e te, month after month teems with notices of purposed operations in terms of the Act, and so far as the rights of the presen* gen ration are concerned, no fear seems to prevail as to impending or possible difficulties. Encouraged by the

present working of the A.ct, the Registrar General goes a step further and favors d still closer assimilation of thn laws affecting real and personal property. In his report he suggests that " real estate on the death of its proprietor should devolve upon his executors or adminis-. trators, and be distributed as personal estate" This, he says, 'could be effected by a very short Act, and the fundamental distinction between the two classes of property would be at once destroyed." He is of opinion also that "if this were done an enormous mass of learning would be got rid of, and it would not be chimerical to hope that the whole law of landed property might ultimately be arranged in logical order and expressed in terse and plain language, so that an intelligent person might find in a single volume the knowledge for which lawyers ransack whole libraries." Lawyers and lawmakers may join issue on this subject hereafter, but meanwhile there is another subject intimately connected with freehold and leasehold rights that more immediately requires consideration. The steady expansion of goldmining industry is bringing the miner into collision with the land owner. The right to mine on private property is becoming day by day a more imperative necessity, and direct legislation thereon is absolutely needed. The evil lias not yet become very apparent in this particular portion of the colony, by reason that Provincial rulers caring little for the progress of settlement, will not in their wisdom alienate the Provincial landed estate from their too cautious grasp by the sale of a single acre of land on or near the froldfields' worth purchase, but in many parts of the South Island, especially in Otago, the relations between the miner and the landowner are unsatisfactory in the extreme, and trouble therein looms ominously. Referring to the subject, a goldfields contemporary says : —" To attack the citadel of the freeholder is a very dangerous task, one that should not be attempted without grave consideration ; but upon the principle that every wrong has a remedy, we think it is the duty of the Colonial Government seriously to weigh the question, and to endeavour to frame some measure to prevent the grievous wrong which is inflicted upon the mining community through the locking up of untold wealth, under acres of land used simply as a barren sheep-walk or a small farm. By all means let the holders of such properties be protected and amply recouped for the spoliation of their lands, but let the miner also be protected against exorbitant and prohibitive demands."