The Real Property Acts 1874 37 Author:Great Britain General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1874 Original Publisher: H. Sweet Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select... more » from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: The effect of the limitations imposed by these statutes is to confer a title on the party who has been in possession for the specified period, which the former owner cannot disturb, -- a title which the new owner is competent to convey to another, and, consequently, such a title as a court of equity, if its aid be invoked, will force upon a purchaser (c). Every reduction in the periods of limitation must, therefore, pro tanto, facilitate the Transfeb Of Land. Preamble. Whereas it is expedient further to limit the times within which actions or suits may be brought for the recovery of land or rent, and of charges thereon. "As knowledge," said the Real Property Commissioners(d), "is diffused, and the administration of justice becomes regular . and pure, the periods of limitation may be safely abridged. By the statute 32 Hen. 8, c. 2, the period of limitation was reduced to sixty years from 352, at which it then stood; and by 21 James 1, the period was again reduced, for all practical purposes, to twenty years." In fixing twenty years as the period of limitation, in all cases, for the recovery of real property, the framers of the act of William IV. were, according to their own admission, following a precedent now 250 years old ; and " knowledge" is certainly more " diffused," and the " administration of justice" is certainly more " pure and regular" now, than they were in the reign of James I. The Lord Chancellor, when introducing the bill on which the act now under discussion was founded, said that " it has been for some time felt as a crying evil that the periods [of limi...« less