“The peasants had also to receive their compensation for the loss of pasturage and the right of cutting wood on the lord’s demesne.  In lieu of these privileges they received allotments of forest and pasturage as absolute property.  The land thus acquired by the peasants is in fact parish property, or in other words, communal property.  This is the only instance in which the parish appears as landowner, for all other peasant property, with the exception of the parish buildings, such as the school, is the property of the respective peasants.  The parish authorities regulate the usage of the common pasturage and common forest.  The sale or cutting down of the latter is subject to the permission of the county authorities.”

I now proceeded to question my friend about the laws respecting the transfer of land, and especially about the registration of titles of estate.  To these inquiries he replied as follows:—­

“Land in Hungary is the absolute property of that person, or corporate body, who appears as owner in the registry.  A limitation of claim to ownership does not exist with us; indeed it is contrary to the law.  The Avitische Patent of 1854 prescribed further that every one should be regarded as the rightful owner who actually held the property in 1848—­i.e., the status quo of 1848 to be accepted as the basis.  The Urbarium of Maria Theresa was, in short, the stand-point in all these arrangements, whether it was the sessional lands of tenants formerly held in hereditary use, now freehold, or the allodium of the noble.  Immediately succeeding the Avitische Patent, the registration of land was made law, in conformity with which all estates had been surveyed and entered on the registry as belonging to those owners who possessed the same in consequence of the above-named patent.”

“But how about disputed inheritance-lands held by mortgagees, and other contingencies always arising in regard to estates?” I asked.

“I am sorry to say that dreadful cases of injustice were caused by this enactment.  Whole families were reduced to beggary, and the greatest rascals obtained possession by this law of enormous estates, simply because they happened to hold the land in 1848, and the rightful owner did not advance his claim within the prescribed time.  The evil could not be redressed, and in 1861, when the Hungarian Constitution was reinstated, the Diet of that year was obliged to accept and confirm the Avitische Patent, and the registration of land as directly following it.  The grievances are past, but the benefit remains to us and our children.  In Hungary at the present time the transfer of land is as simple as buying or selling the registered shares of a railway company.  The registry forms the basis of every transaction connected with landed property, and, as we lawyers say, what is not entered there non est in mundo.  Mortgages must be set down against the registered title.  Contracts of leases are also entered, and in the case of farms being taken, caution-money, amounting generally to a quarter’s rent, must be deposited with the authorities.”