which they may be called on to discharge. They had this printed, and addressed to every member of Parliament, and they used every means to interest those over Scotland possessing any political power or influence, to forward the views set forth in the Memorial. Deputations were even sent to London, and it appears Mr Robertson was one so sent at all events. He was in London last winter, and found some difficulty with the members of the Lower House in getting them to understand who and what a Scotch Sheriff was, and in what his functions differed from those respectable gentlemen in London who annually gravely count a certain number of hob-nails before the Judges of England in Exchequer, or their brothers in the counties by whom, or in whose name, the pots and pans, tables and chairs of the impecunious lieges are wont to be carried off and sold. Being the last paper of this series, and bearing in its chronological position a striking resemblance to nearly the last paper in a Sheriff Court process, with which the Sheriff and we are somewhat familiar, we christened the Sheriff's Letter a reclaiming petition. The Sheriff, in dudgeon, retorts that we have stolen the idea, and that the true owner was the shrewd Davie Gellatly in Waverley. The gods have not made us witty, but it is some consolation to see that we have been the cause of wit in the Sheriff. But if on this single point the worthy Sheriff is content to enact the character of Bailie M'Wheeble we for our part can have not the least objection to represent the shrewd Davie Gellatly, for we rather think there was both truth and wit in Davie's description of the Bailie's conversation. We confess we were at first rather nettled by the Sheriff's charges of want of truth and courtesy, and both, it seems, towards Mr Stirling of Keir; but on rereading the Sheriff's letter, we instantly became calm. For it appears to be a characteristic of the Sheriff's style to use forcible if not polished phrases of and concerning his opponents. One specimen only we give; the remainder will be found carefully collected by our contemporary, the Journal of Jurisprudence, in his December number. At page 19 of the Sheriff's Letter we find those who underrate the status of the SheriffSubstitutes described as “idle and not honest." Verbum sap. Need we say more? Now, a word as to our want of courtesy, and we have done with these nuga. We ask the Sheriff to re-read with us his own pamphlet, at the top of page 4. His words are "They (that is, the pages of his Letter), they contain indeed little more than a connected summary of my answers to the questions lately put to me in London by you, and which I have since been able deliberately to revise and consider. I now address them to you as embodying the evidence which I then gave; and I publish them as the answers of a witness in reply to the questions of an examinator, to whom no sane person would venture to make a statement, the accuracy of which could be successfully called in question."

The Sheriff quotes us quite correctly when we expressed our surprise that Mr Stirling, a Scottish M.P. of great ability, should have needed farther information about the Sheriff Courts of Scotland; and this, it appears, showed our want of courtesy. Very well, be it so. As the Sheriff thinks he has detected us prigging from Davie Gellatly, we must, in this instance, frankly confess that the idea of the state of Mr Stirling's knowledge is not our own. We humbly admit that we stole it from the Sheriff himself, and the citation we have just made from his pamphlet clearly convicts us; for it stands to

reason that when a man asks questions, especially a man like the member for Perth, he does it to increase his knowledge; and what use was there in interrogating a witness like the Sheriff, who may be ranked among the class of experts, unless he could enlarge his interrogator's information? But we must say this for Mr Stirling, that if he heard substantially the socalled facts of this pamphlet, as the Sheriff says he did, as a veritable history of the Sheriff's office in Scotland, we are not in the least astonished that he should ask questions; for if the same statement had been made to almost any well-informed lawyer in Scotland, he would have been as much in want of more information, and as much disposed to ask questions, as Mr Stirling himself. For ourselves, when we read the pamphlet for the first time, we asked ourselves if it could be true, because, if true, we had hitherto been in a state of lamentable ignorance, and therefore were under deep obligations to the writer. But, recollecting ourselves a little, and recalling a number of things with which we thought ourselves pretty familiar, we came to the conclusion that, had we been in Mr Stirling's position, and with all our knowledge of the subject, we should have been perhaps even more disposed than he was to ask questions for farther information regarding the facts which bore the semblance of knowledge.

We published entire, in our last, Mr Robertson's letter, without note or comment, and for this courtesy he has had the grace to thank us. The expressed object of that letter was to answer two charges which we were alleged to have made in our original notice of the Sheriff's Letter to Mr Stirling. The first of these is, that we had charged the Sheriff with advocating the same allowance of salary for all the SheriffSubstitutes. Now, the paragraph from which the Sheriff culls the sentence he cites, is an attempt on our part to represent the whole case of the SheriffSubstitutes; and if he has a copy past him, and will turn to the index of our volume for last year, he will find the Sheriffs' Memorial printed at length, and in it the duties of the Scottish Sheriff-Substitutes are elaborately and somewhat violently contrasted with those of the County Court Judges of England, and, by contraries, their respective salaries. We were dealing with the whole case of the Sheriff-Substitutes, and not Mr Robertson's Letter alone; and as he was one of the memorialists, and in his pamphlet at pp. 25, 26, and 27, he largely quotes from and endorses it, we were justified in considering his Letter as only part of their case. Now, it is no very violent supposition to make, that one cause, at least, for the Scottish Sheriff - Substitutes asking an increase of salary, was the assumed disparity between their duties and their salaries and those of the English Judges, and, at all events, that disparity is strongly dwelt on, and extremely well put, doubtless to draw out the well-known English love of fairness. It is well known that the salaries of the English County Court Judges are fixed by Act of Parliament, and are uniform within certain limits; but nowhere in any paper we have seen do the Sheriff-Substitutes fix any limit to which they wish their salaries raised and limited. That being so, we and others were left to conclude that the parallel between the Judges was to be made completenay, if anything, the Scottish Judges should be made the better of the two, for did they not perform more work, and were they not in jurisdiction superior to their English brethren? In the absence, therefore, of any limit, we maintain we were quite justified in

assuming that the minimum and maximum of the English Judges was also the wish and desire of our own Judges. How that was to be done was rather a ticklish question. The Memorial to Government had not been well received. It had the aspect of a money question, and as the financial figure of our judicial establishments has of late years rather increased in the annual estimates, it is extremely probable that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had his attention called to the desired increase, and-and-in short, he didn't like it at all. So, in the Memorial addressed to Parliament, this difficulty was met. The Sheriffs-Principal or Sheriffs-Depute might be dispensed with-this office was almost a sinecure. There were twentythree of these Judges, having an average salary of £650 per annum, while there are fifty-five SheriffSubstitutes, having an average salary of £627 per annum. It was a neat tour de force of finance. Abolish the office of Sheriff, and about a-half might be added to the salaries of the remaining Judges. This would checkmate the wary Chancellor, and his Scottish judicial estimates would remain as at present. On this hint the Sheriff spoke to Mr Stirling in London, and on his return to Scotland, deliberately wrote, reconsidered, and revised his statement, and sent it forth in the shape of a Letter to his interrogator. The whole aim of his pamphlet is to prove, not only that the Sheriffs are little more than sinecurists, but that the only working County Judges are the Sheriff-Substitutes. Such is the view which the Sheriff-Substitutes' case presents itself to us. If we have misapprehended or misrepresented it, it is not without an honest endeavour, whatever Mr Robertson may think, to understand it, and we know that we are not solitary in the opinion to which we have come.

In conclusion, we wish it to be distinctly understood that we have not written on this question as hostile to an increase in the Sheriff-Substitutes' salaries; on the contrary, from the first we have said, and we repeat that they ought to be well remunerated. The office must be filled by learned and able men-men abreast if not ahead of the learning and intelligence rising around them, and we cannot hope to get men either able or learned unless we offer sufficient rewards. What is a sufficient reward, in the peculiar condition of Scotland and its bar, is a question surrounded with difficulties. But it is a mistake rather than a solution to ask that Scotland shall be treated as if it were England; and it is a still greater blunder to ask that the office of SheriffDepute shall be abolished, in the belief that that change would elevate the status, and increase the salaries of the Sheriff-Substitutes.

We have received the following communication on the same subject from a Sheriff-Substitute, setting forth some aspects of the case not yet, perhaps, sufficiently considered; and we willingly give it insertion. We only wish the Sheriff had empowered us to add his name:

(To the Editor of the Scottish Law Magazine.) SIR,-Allow me, as one of the Sheriff-Substitutes who cannot complain of being overworked, to make a few remarks upon Mr Robertson's letter which appeared in your December number.

He there maintains the principle, and it is in accordance with the view you have yourself advocated, that the salaries of the Sheriffs-Substitute should be proportioned to the work they have to do, and that this should be the main rule for determining the amount. I conceive this principle, on the other hand, to be in the

very

obvious reasons.

First. The litigants, within a jurisdiction where the causes are few in number, have the same title to a sound judgment as in the jurisdictions where they are more numerous, but if so, you must have as well qualified lawyers for the one as the other, and why should the same qualifications in one man be remunerated differently from another?

Second. It must be kept in view, that no matter whether a Sheriff-Substitute has a large amount of work or not, he cannot employ his unoccupied time in any other profitable work, and Government debars him from engaging in any other business-even from arbitrations; and if his whole time is thus lost to him by his office, as a means of adding to his income, because his employers so order it, there is as much reason why he should be remunerated for that lost time as if it were wholly taken up with official duties.

jurisdictions where statistics would make it appear that Third. It is a great mistake to suppose that in those the least work is done, there is in truth the least for the Sheriff to do. In the larger districts, where work of all kinds is constant and regular, you have subordinate officials much better acquainted with their duties. They are well up to forms, and the Sheriff has no trouble as regards the routine of business. In the smaller districts business occurs in the least degree out of the common run There, whenever a piece of it is quite the reverse. applications for fugæ warrants, cessio, sentences, sequestrations, and the like, with all the varied work under the hundred different Acts of Parliament-he has to administer. The Sheriff has not only to apply the law, but take most of the trouble of searching out and furnishing the forms-thus adding very largely to his own proper business in such cases.

I do not mean to argue that the extent of work should be wholly left out of view, but what I would maintain is, that where that consideration is let in, it should be as the exception, not the rule. In the very large towns it should certainly be taken into view, and have great weight; but when you put aside these, I think I have shown very good reasons why it should tell

but little.

Allow me to add that I do not think, in your own observations upon the claims of our body, you have at all given due weight to the fact that the County Court Judges in England are remunerated so differently from the County Judges in Scotland, having minimum salaries considerably more than double, and being allowed to practise professionally besides, while they have less important duties to perform. You would not maintain that a Scotch litigant is to have worse law than his countryman across the border? To furnish that you must have men of equal qualifications. But would you say that the head that supplies it is to do it at less than half the cost to the country, simply because the wearer has it on Scotch shoulders in place of English? I presume you are a professional man: would you think it just if Government employed you to do a piece of agency in Scotland, and an attorney in England to do another of a like nature, and paid the latter a double rate of fees as compared with yours?

The fact is, the social position of our body has been raised too high by late changes to be maintained on the present minimum salaries. That position should either have been kept as it was, or the minimum made higher. And it is not merely the present occupants of office that will be found dissatisfied; the feeling will continue, a chronic soreness, until some change is made.

As a body, I believe we would by no means look for at all so high a minimum as the County Judges in England. But we at least feel the two should be made to approximate more nearly-the one at present being considerably more than double the other. The County Court Judge has £1200 as a minimum-the Substitutes, I think, point at £400 less. Is that immoderate? Your obedient servant,

S. S.

four in the year 1861-could only be ascertained by examining more or less in detail, first, every entry in the Minute Book of the General Register, which contains writs applicable to every parish in Scotland; and, second, every entry in the Particular Register for Renfrewshire and the Regality of Glasgow, embracing twenty-one parishes, some of them being the most densely populated in Scotland.

But about 1821, under the supervision of the late Mr Thomas Thomson, an abridgment of the Registers of Sasines was commenced, starting from the year 1781. This abridgment is arranged in Counties, and contains in chronological order abstracts, sufficiently minute for purposes of search, of all writs affecting lands in each County, whether these be registered in the General or Particular Registers. The series of Abridgment Books (all being printed) is complete down to 1855, and in certain Counties for some years later. Making these printed County Abridgment Books the books of reference, Mr Thomson proceeded a step farther, and constructed two Indexes to their contents-the one an Index of Persons, appearing from the writs registered to be interested in the lands described in the writs; the other an Index of Places, containing the names of the lands described in the Registers. The Index of Persons is still continued, but the Index of Places was discontinued in 1830. Practitioners, generally, have hitherto understood that a search for incumbrances affecting lands implied a search against the lands. But, from the Report of the Commissioners, it appears that, so far from this being the case, a search, as a rule, is made by means of the Index of Persons alone-the persons searched against being those against whom searches for diligence are ordered-and that a search against the lands is quite the exception. Not only so, but it appears that the Index of Places, during the period for which it is complete, is almost never referred to, and Mr Robertson, deputy keeper of the records, and five gentlemen who, as professional searchers, have had the best means of forming an opinion entitled to weight on such a question, all concur in saying that, were it practicable to frame a complete Index of Places, which they think it is not, such an Index would be valueless. The Commissioners endorse this opinion, recommending that no attempt should be made to resume the Index of Places, and that to ensure, as far as possible, accuracy in searches made by the aid of the Index of Persons, agents should furnish a certified list of the names of all parties whose acts or deeds may have affected the property during the period of search, instead of leaving the searcher to grope for this information in the instructions given to him for a search for diligence.

It is not a little startling to be told that the accuracy of the searches, on which implicit reliance requires to be placed in the conveyancer's most responsible and important transactions, depends in a great measure on the completeness of the searcher's information as to the persons who have successively been interested in the subjects of search, and on the accuracy of the compiler of the index of the thousands of names appearing in the Registers. Still more startling is it to know that, in one search so conducted, no less than eight entries were omitted, one of them being the proprietor's infeftment in the lands, and the others being securities to the amount of above £22,000! and that the searcher, in answer to a complaint regarding these omissions, assured his employer that the certificates "could not under the circumstances have been different from what they were" -adding, "The former search was sent in for a continuation in the Sasine Registers, and the note gave the name of no person whose interest in the lands had to be searched against. Consequently, I continued to search against the person who was proprietor at the conclusion of the former search." The Committee must accept the fact, as established by the Commissioners' Report, that

for a long period of years searches have been made only in this way, and that in no other way is it practicable, in the ordinary case and under the existing system, to make a search, without an amount of labour and expense which would practically render nugatory the whole registration system, in so far as security to parties transacting in real property is concerned.

EVILS OF THE PRESENT SYSTEM.

The objections to which the present system, thus briefly described, is open, are, as they were in 1831, expense, delay, and inaccuracy. The expense of a search for forty years, in the various Registers, amounts to from £12 to £14, and, as regards properties of small value, constitutes a grevious hardship to the owners. The delay is caused (1) by the length of the prescriptive period; (2) by the arrear in the work of abridgment; and, (3) by the double Registers, rendering necessary a search both in the General and Particular Registers. The inaccuracy, which, unfortunately, in the experience of some practitioners, is not, as Mr Downie describes it, "miraculously rare," is the result-perhaps almost the necessary result of a search made by an Index of Persons, without any counter-check. It may also, perhaps, be in part attributed to the searchers relying upon private and unofficial indexes, made up for their date to which the official index happens to be completed own convenience, applicable to the period between the and the date of search. Another cause is the want of any record to which to refer for the period from the last entry in the Minute Book to the time of search—often at all, it must be by reference to the deeds, scattered extending to weeks-during which, if a search be made loose sheets, containing drafts of minutes prepared for through the office in course of engrossment, and to the the Minute Books.

LEADING RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE COMMISSIONERS. The Commissioners have, in their Report, submitted a series of matured suggestions, intended to obviate the evils of the present system as far as practicable, and to such of their recommendations as are of leading importance, or possess an interest to the Faculty, the Committee will now advert.

FIRST. With the view of simplifying the Registers themselves.

It is proposed-(1) That the double Registers of Sasines, and of Inhibitions, and the Registers of Adjudications, and Interruptions of Prescription, should be discontinued; (2) That for the future one Register of Sasines, in which Interruptions of Prescription are to be recorded, should be kept in Edinburgh, a distinct series of volumes being devoted to each County; (3) That one Register, applicable to the whole of Scotland, should be kept in Edinburgh, for Inhibitions and Adjudications; and (4) That the Burgh Registers of Sasines should continue to be kept as hitherto.

SECOND. With the view of facilitating and simplifying Searches for Incumbrances,

It is proposed (1) That every deed should bear the County and Parish in which the property is situated; (2) That a Presentment Book should be kept, in which every deed should be entered when presented, and the entry signed by the presenter; (3) That a new Parish Index of names of persons should be kept, with the view of limiting the area of search, and lessening the risk of error from a multiplicity of similar names; (4) That the Abridgment Book should bear the Parish on the margin, and be kept up as closely as possible to the Register, and that printed copies should be transmitted to local officials, in the various Counties, for the use of the public; and (5) That a search sheet should be established, applicable to every distinct property, a duplicate of which, passing with the progress of titles, would, in the course of time, supersede searches for incumbrances.

(To be continued.)

1. DUNCAN M'NEILL, Esquire, appointed Sheriff 22d December, 1826-afterwards Lord Advocate, Lord Colonsay, Lord President, and Lord Justice-General. 2. ADAM ANDERSON, Esquire, appointed Sheriff 9th January, 1835-afterwards Lord Anderson; died 1853.

3. ROBERT WHIGHAM, Esquire, appointed Sheriff 10th December, 1841-died in March, 1849.

4. JAMES CRAWFORD, Esquire, appointed Sheriff 16th March, 1849-appointed Solicitor-General; afterwards Lord Ardmillan.

5. DAVID MURE, Esquire, appointed Sheriff on 26th November, 1853-appointed Solicitor-General; afterwards Lord Advocate; M.P. for Bute. 6. EDWARD STRATHEARN GORDON, Esquire, appointed Sheriff 6th August, 1858.

HUGH BARCLAY, Sheriff-Substitute-appointed to Dunblane on 7th October, 1829; removed to Perth on 23d November, 1833.

"Full and minute statistical details are to the Lawgiver as the chart, the compass, and the lead to the Navigator."-LORD BROUGHAM. FOR THE YEAR ENDING 1ST DECEMBER.

1 Number of Interlocutors by the Substitute (excluding incidental proceedings,) 2 Interlocutors by Sheriff on Appeal,

3 Whereof Affirming the Substitute's Interlocutor,

[Continued on next page.