Other differences also exposed its falsity. One of the most extraordinary was the contrast between the “Lease” and the “Memorial” as to the mode of witnessing Lord Donegall’s signature. Two witnesses attested the “lease,” whereas the “Memorial” showed there had been three to the original. The same three persons attested Lord Donegall’s signature to the “Memorial” itself. Had the case been reversed, and if the names of three witnesses figured on the “lease” while only two appeared on the “Memorial,” the absence of a name from the latter might be explained by carelessness or mischance. No such excuse could account for the disappearance of a signature from an “original” and its presence in a secondary document. Only one conclusion from such a variance seemed possible, yet the plaintiffs insisted that the “Memorial” was unreliable, and the piebald parchment genuine. No Memorial had ever before been discredited in the centuries since registration was established. The title to millions’ worth of property, not only in Ireland but in wealthy Middlesex and vast Yorkshire, depends on their trustworthiness. The manner of their preparation and lodgment, as a system of verification of the contents of deeds, is one prescribed by Statute to prevent fraud, or to detect it if committed. Lord Donegall’s “Memorial” branded the so-called “original” as a counterfeit. That was the function which the law assigned to it, and it fulfilled its duty. Still the imputation of forgery was too rude and uncourtly for the 20th century. A theory of inadvertence and mistake was preferred. “Forgery” is a hard saying, and any suggestion to explain it away attracts an honest mind. So the “Memorial” was held to be inconclusive, and the counterfeit genuine, by Mr. Justice Ross. Fortunately for the repute of registration, research brought afterwards to light collateral proof of its reliability. On the day Lord Donegall executed the lease in dispute he also gave May a second lease relating to a quarry. Both were registered on the same day and by the same officials in Dublin. The “Memorial” of the quarry lease showed there were three witnesses to Lord Donegall’s signature, and that these were the same three persons who attested the fishery lease and its “Memorial.” Thus the witnessing trio were certified to be the same in the case of two leases and two “Memorials”—whereas the document relied on by the plaintiffs bore the signatures of only two witnesses. An independent and collateral registration, therefore, corroborated the “Memorial” of the fishery lease in a vital respect. To cast discredit on it in order to bolster up the decrepit Patents of the Donegalls was an ill tribute to the system on which so much property rests.