for all. We want to bring about a reform as though it were something to cast in bronze or carve in stone, and leave it alone and have it done. God didn't build the universe on those lines. No sooner do you make an effort to make things better, and perhaps make them better, but they slip away. If it were true when it was said, it is truer to-day, that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," and perpetual effort and sacrifice is the price that you and I must pay if we expect to have decent things. It will not do merely to criticise; that does not help. It will not do that in your homes and your clubs and in the gatherings of your fellows you say this ought not to be so and that ought not to be so, and this is an outrage and that is an outrage. The responsibility is with you, and it is an individual responsibility. You cannot satisfy your conscience by a little gift of money at this time and that time to a cause. As we said and said truly of Cornelius Vanderbilt at the time of his death, he gave of his great wealth, but that was nothing; but from his time, of which he had no more than another, he gave prodigally; and there has got to be sacrifice on your part if things are to be bettered, and not criticism. Are you going to turn over an electorate honest and eager to be led by true men-are you going to turn that electorate of the plain people over to the men who are seeking to control it, whether under the guise of democracy or republicanism, and think you can sit in your homes with your consciences free? Power brings responsibility, and we who are lawyers, beyond any other class in this community, both as educated men and men in whom trust is reposed, have these responsibilities; and how, I ask you, have we in the main discharged them? Have we been true to what, after all, is a noble profession, and true to its traditions? I think while we have done something, we have not done what we ought to have done. It seems to me that if ever there lay on any body of men the weight of that noble old sentiment, "noblesse oblige," it lies on the educated lawyer of to-day, to make life sweeter, to see to it that all men have their rights, though at sacrifice to ourselves, to stand for the honest and loyal thing, yes, even regardless of party lines, to nail the lie and dare to speak the truth -these, surely, are duties; they may alienate friends, they may bring hostile criticism, but you have got to fight in this world to get anything, and you have got to fight to keep it. And suppose the periods of depression come? Suppose you go down in the fight? You have kept your self-respect, and you have got to live with yourself most of the time. That remains, and under God's heaven it is the only possession, in the last analysis, which is worth anything. Suppose you fail? Suppose you fight the fight and lose? "When Earth's last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried, ADDRESS OF EDWARD T. TAYLOR OF GLENWOOD SPRINGS, COLORADO. THE TORRENS SYSTEM OF REGISTERING TITLE TO LAND. HISTORICAL. Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Colorado Bar Association: The evolution of the manner in which the various tribes and nations of the earth have held the lands they occupied forms many interesting chapters in the history of the human race. From the Bible we learn that in the beginning man depended for his sustenance upon his prowess in the chase, supplemented by a desultory and intermittent cultivation of the soil. He was nomadic in his habits and cared little for the use of land for other than his temporary convenience. There is little doubt but that for centuries there was no such thing as individual ownership of any particular plot or portion of ground. During all of that period man was contented with bare or naked possession, and neither sought for nor desired a better title. As the family circle widened, and the tribes were formed, the more desirable locations were selected and cleared, and the value of these possessory rights became more apparent. The head of the household or chief of the tribe was looked upon as the owner of the ground upon which the family or community was settled, and assumed the authority of apportioning or alloting to each householder some particular portion of the land occupied. The pasture or range of land, as we would call it, as well as the wild country beyond the domains of the community, were looked upon as the common property of all. Considering the nature and habits of the people, it was but a step from this system to the feudal system of tenureship. Possession was the title to real estate. Conveyance was made by open and notorious delivery of the possession. Afterwards witnesses were required, and some act, such as taking the grantee onto the land and delivering to him a twig, a piece of sod, or some kind of a rude latch key, became the customary mode of transferring the title, and so continued for several generations. The next step in advancement was made by the growth of the custom to set forth the fact of a transfer in a writing called a charter, which was deposited for safe keeping in a monastery. It is said that up to the time of the Norman Conquest the title of property was vested in the person in possession, and the writing which followed the title was merely for the purpose of perpetuating the knowledge which the witnesses to the transfer had, and which by reason of their death might become uncertain. When William the Conqueror took possession of England he forcibly siezed the lands of the vanquished, ransacked the monasteries and destroyed all evidence of title. He engrafted upon the English estates the principles of feudalism. Titles were then held from the king, his barons and followers. After the conquest the demands of a higher civilization made a change desirable in the system of land titles and led to the enactment of the Statute of 27 Henry VII., by which estates in land might be transferred by deed without the formal act of delivery of possession; and this eventually led to the enactment of the Statute of Enrollment 27 Henry VIII., by which the record became necessary, not only to pass title, but also to give notice to the world. Livery of seisin being no longer solely necessary to transfer land, a record and notice took its place and from that time wholly supplanted it. During the reign of Queen Anne another recording act was passed. But it was not until 1845 that the various recording acts were reduced to the system similar to that prevailing in the United States to-day. That system continued in England until 1865, when it was supplanted by the Torrens system, hereinafter referred to. CONTINENTAL EUROPE. In the little country of Bohemia it is said that registered ownership of land runs back to the time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. In Vienna, registers of 1368 are still preserved. In Prague they go back as far as the Fourteenth Century, and in Munich as far back as the Fifteenth Century. It is interesting to reflect that ere the caravels of Columbus sought their uncertain course across the waste of waters on that journey which was to add so much to the glory of the Spanish crown, and the results of which have raised on the Western hemisphere the power which after the lapse of four hundred years was destined to humble the crown and wrest from her grasp the Queen of the Antilles, the blessings of this law we are now considering were enjoyed by the people of those far away Austrian provinces. The system was made universal in Austria in 1811; it was adopted in Saxony in 1843, in Hungary in 1849-56, and in Prussia in 1872. The system is used also in a part of Switzerland and in Tunis. The following extract taken from the report of C. Fortesque Brickdale, Esq., Assistant Registrar of the Land Registry (England), made to the British government on the system of registration of title now in operation in Germany and Austria-Hungary, 31 Am. Law Review, 827, shows the vast variety of conditions under which this system is at this time administered in those countries: "The particular examples collected in the detailed report (accompanying the main report), include, for instance, such great estates as the ancestral domains of the Bohemian nobility (among whom are to be found some of the largest land-owners in Europe), |