REGISTRATION. (Scotland.) The registration of documents In Scotland is Intimately connected with the titles of real property, and with the execution of the law. It is thus divided into two distinct departments, which may be considered separately—Registration for Preservation and Registration for Execution.
Registration for Preservation, in its simplest form, is merely the preserving of an attested transcript of any deed in a public register, that thus an authentic copy may be had recourse to in case the original should be lost. Besides the statutory records of particular deeds, there are books attached to the several courts of civil juris diction, in which parties may for their own couvenience register such documents as do not require by any special obligatory law to be recorded. It is a general rule that extracts from any such records may stand in the place of the originals when these are not forth coming. In the case of deeds, of which, as will be seen below, it is not the deed itself, but its registration, that makes the completed title, an extract from the register is the proper document to be produced.
In actions, however, the object of which is the annulling the deed on some legal ground, the original must be produced if it be accessible.
It is usual to speak of registration for preservation as being also for publication ; and in this sense, when a deed is of such a character that to make it effectual in the grantee's favour it must have been delivered to him by the grantor, such registration ia in the general case equiva lent to delivery. It will operate in this respect in adjusting questions of competing right, as where a father makes over to one child the pro perty that, in case of his dying intestate, would go to another, and registers the deed. The registration of ordinary documents for preservation was sanctioned by the Act 1698, c. 4, which generally extends to registration " in any authentic public register that is competent." Besides the central register attached to the supreme court, there are others connected with the Sheriff and Corporation Courts ; but it does not appear to be distinctly settled what may be, with reference to various descriptions of documents in each case, a "competent" register.
The most important of the registers for preservation is that of the " Sasines and Reversions," the former word expressing the act by which an estate is created or transferred in heritable (that is, real) property, the latter the attestation of the extinction of a burden (that is, of the devolution of a temporary estate on the person entitled to the remainder). This system has been gradually formed. In its
present state its main operative principle is, that when a title to land appears on the register, no latent title derived from the same authority can compete with it, and that registered titles rank according to their priority ; so that if A first sell his property to B and execute the proper conveyance, and subsequently sell the same property to C, if C get this title first recorded it cannot be questioned by B. who has only his pecuniary recourse against A. In pursuance of this system, in transactions regarding land, the public records are relied on as affording the means of ascertaining the character and title, and after they have searched for the period of prescription, or examined over a period of forty years [Passesirrros], parties can trust that there are no latent rights, and may safely deal with the person who professes to dispose of any right connected with it. The origin of this system may be traced to the commencement of the 16th century, when the notaries were required to record their proceedings in their protocols, and the other officers connected with the feudal transference of land were bound to make returns of their official acts. In 1599 an Act was passed in which an effort was made to produce regularity in these registers, by penaltica: It was by the Act 1617, c. 16, that the system was founded on its right principle. The preamble of that statute bears " considering the great hurt sustained by his Majesty's lieges by the fraudulent dealing of parties who having annailied [alienated] their lands, and received great aurnmes of money therefore, yet by their unjust concealing of some private right formerly made by them, render the subsequent alienation done for great ampules of money altogether unprofitable ; which cannot be avoided unless the said private rights be made public and patent to her Majesty's lieges." The Act then appoints the deeds to be registered, otherwise they are " to make no faith in judgment, by way of action or exception, in prejudice of a third party, who path acquired a perfect and lawful right to the said lands and heritages : But (without) prejudice alwayea to them to use the said writs against the party maker thereof, his heirs, and successors." There was a material defect in this Act, that a person might have his title imme• diately registered, but was liable to have it superseded by any other person able to register a title on a warrant previously obtained. This was remedied by the Act 1693, c.13, which gave the regiherable titles priority not according to the data of their execution, but to that of their registration.