FACILITIES FOR TRANSFER OF LAND.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE “SFEOTATOR.1 Sin,—A good cause is rarely aided by the use of extravagant language ; and experience proves that under a nearly perfect system of registration of titles, land cannot be sold and transferred quite so readily as railway shares. Maps and descriptions have to be looked into very carefully, and this circumstance alone is suffi- cient to show that the transfer of "any acre of land in five minutes" was a mere piece of rhetoric.
As a matter of simple fact, I may state that on many occasions small parcels of land have been sold and transferred with such facility that one hour has sufficed to complete the matter. You will see by the enclosed schedule that the expense of transfer is three guineas [the value not exceeding £1,000], exclusive of an office fee, varying from 5s. to 102., and of the usual stamp duty. This system, which is to a great extent founded on that devised by Sir R. R. Torrens for the Australian colonies, has been experi- mentally working in Ireland for some years, but it is little known to the public. As a piece of legal machinery it works smoothly and effectively. In round numbers, five hundred and twenty-five estates, large and small, are on this Register, of an aggregate value short of two millions sterling. This is sufficient to test the value and practicability, even under British Real Property Law, of a system which will unquestionably be of enormous use to the country at some future day, when it shall be fully explained and
widely understood.—I am, Sir, &c., R. DENNY URLIN.
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