the Courts, and the Prisons are reared. Your codes are blind without the miraculous torches which this Office can light. Your judges can not propound the ‘laur’—I beg your pardon, the law—without the aid of these musty, smelling, dilapidated tomes. Ay, these are the very constables of the realm, and without them there can be no realm, no legislators, and no judges. Strong, club-bearing constables, these Liebers, standing on the boundary lines, keeping peace between brothers and neighbours.
“Here, in these Liebers is an authority which never fails, never dies—an authority which willy-nilly we obey and in which we place unbounded trust. In any one of these Registers is a potentiality which can always worst the quibbles and quiddities of lawyers and ward off the miserable technicalities of the law. Any of them, when called upon, can go into court and dictate to the litigants and the attorneys, the jury and the judge. They are the deceased witnesses come to life. And without them, the judges are helpless, the marshals and sheriffs too. Ay, and what without them would be the state of our real-estate interests? Abolish your constabulary force, and your police force, and with these muniments of power, these dumb but farseeing agents of authority and intelligence, you could still maintain peace and order. But burn you this Register’s Office, and before the last Lieber turn to ashes, ere the last flame of the conflagration die out, you will have to call forth, not only your fire squads, but your police force and even your soldiery, to extinguish other fires different in nature, but more devouring—and as many of them as there are boundary lines in the land.”
And we now come to the gist of the matter.
“What wealth of moral truth,” he continues, “do we find in these greasy, musty pages. When one deeds a piece of property, he deeds with it something more valuable, more enduring. He deeds with it an undying human intelligence