SIR ROBERT TORRENS ON LAND-TRANSFER.* TRANSFERS of land, whether absolute,

or for any restricted pur- pose such as lease or mortgage, are, in most civilised countries, except our own, effected by means of acts done before some public officer, who makes a record of each such act, when com- pleted before him. These public records constitute the ordinary evidence of land-ownership. Whenever, indeed, subsequently to any recorded transfer the ownership is changed by death and heirship, or other events external to the record of ownership, evidence of these events is needed to establish the title of the sub- stituted owner, but such evidence is generally needed and given once for all. In many European countries, the records of land- transfers and land-ownership are kept by way of reference to. cadastral maps, and the maps and records being used not only for land-transfer, but also for fiscal purposes, their- accuracy is so often put to the test that it is well nigh impossible- for an error to go undiscovered. Widely different from all this is our English system. We possess no general public record or- register whatever of deeds transferring the ownership of land, still less, any record of actual land-ownership. The title and ownership of any given piece of land in England at any givers moment can be arrived at only by way of inference from the' language and legal construction of all the deeds, wills, and other documents affecting that land, which have been executed

within a generation or two previously. -When land is sold, the purchaser's counsel or solicitor sets out with the earliest deed or

will appearing on the title, and if he finds that it is dated far- enough back, and that the subsequent enjoyment of the land has been in conformity with it, he is bound to take for granted that the person who made this earliest conveyance or devise.

had good right to make it. But from that time forward he can take nothing for granted. He must scrutinise every subsequent

deed and will affecting the title, considering at every step whether there may not be some possible construction under which the vendor's title would be open to objection. If, for instance, coming to an ill-drawn will, he thinks it might be' fairly argued that a devisee who afterwards disposed of the inheritance of the property as tenant-in-tail was upon the true- construction only tenant for life, he is bound to raise the ques- tion. Then he must call for evidence of all matters of pedigree in cases of descent, for declarations connecting the land sold with the vague and obscure descriptions often found in deeds,. and for much other troublesome and costly evidence. There are many honest and zealous practitioners of the law who scarcely think they have earned their fee for advising on a title,. unless they can formulate a number of startling objections an& requisitions.

Lord Cairns, when Attorney-General, thus described the prac- tical working of this system to the House of Commons, in Lt. speech referred to by Sir Robert Torrens :—"Yon buy an estate.

at an auction, or you enter into a contract for the purchase of the estate. You are very anxious to get possession of the pro- perty you have bought, and the vendor is very anxious to get- his money. But do you get possession of the property ? On the contrary, you cannot get the estate, nor can the vendor get his money, until after a lapse—sometimes no inconsiderable portion of a man's lifethn e —spent in the preparation of abstracts,.

in the comparison of deeds, in searches for incumbrances, in objections made to the title, ia answers to those objections, in disputes which arise upon the answers, in endeavours to cure the defects ; not only months, but years frequently pass in a.

history of that kind, and I should say that it is an uncommon. thing in this country for a purchase of any magnitude to be- completed—completed by possession and payment of the price- -in a period under, at all events, twelve months," And ath this expenditure of time and money in the investigation. of title has to be incurred, be it remembered, not once for- all, but over and over again, as often as a piece of land is sold

* An Essay on the Transfer of Land by Registration under the Duplicate Method Operative in British Colonies. By Sir Robert Turrons, London t Cassell, Fetter, Galpin, and Co. or mortgaged, No purchaser or mortgagee can be required to accept a title, merely because some previous purchaser or mort- gagee has had it investigated and found to be good. If an estate, held under one title, is sold in twenty lots to as many different purchasers, there is no reason why there should not be twenty separate investigations of title, and twenty separate sets of objections and requisitions. There are titles in England which have, in all probability, been investigated and advised upon more than a hundred. times over. We may add, that a purchaser who repents of his bargain often raises diffi- culties about the title merely as a means of getting out of it.

As a matter of course, over since law reform was brought within the range of practical politics by the passing of the first Reform Act, plans for the reform of this well-nigh intolerable system of land-transfer have been under discussion. The earlier law re- formers favoured the establishment of a general Register of deeds and wills affecting the ownership of land. But as the subject was more fully considered, the conviction grew that this was not the remedy needed. A Register of Deeds, by enabling a purchaser to ascertain with certainty that no deed or will material to his title had been withheld or suppressed, might make titles a little more secure, but titles properly investigated are sufficiently secure already. It is not insecurity, but, as explained by Lord Cairns, the delay and expense attending investigations of title, which are the crying evils of the present system. And it is quite certain that the registry searches, extending over long periods of time, which would be necessary under a Register of Deeds, would give rise to increased delay and. increased expense. It was, we believe, first suggested by Mr. Robert Wilson, who gave evidence before a Commission presided over by the late Lord Langdale, that the true remedy lay in a registration, not of the deeds from which title or owner- ship was to be inferred, but of actual title or ownership itself, whether absolute, as of the fee simple, or limited, •as of a life estate, a lease, or a mortgage. And it has long been quite certain that the choice really lies between the reten- tion of the present system, and the substitution for it of a registration of actual title or ownership, getting rid altogether (when the system has come into full operation) of retrospective investigations into title. For many years this question of the Registration of Titles has been under the consideration of sus. cessive Royal Commissions and Parliamentary Committees. It may surprise some of our readers to learn that two Land Trans- fer Acts, actually establishing a Registration of Titles in Eng- land, have been passed, one in 1862 and one in 1875. They were, however, permissive Acts, and have had about as much practi- cal effect as the Act permitting landlords to make compensation to their tenants for unexhausted improvements.

But while the question has thus continued in a state of sus- pense in England, it has, in many of our English colonies, been completely solved. Sir Robert Torrens is the author of a sys- tem of land-transfer by means of entries made on a public record of land-ownership, which was brought into operation in the colony of South Australia upwards of twenty years ago, and which was there so successful that it has since been adopted by eight other 13ritish colonies, including, we believe, all the Aus- tralian Colonies, New Zealand, and British Columbia. The evidence in favour of the success and popularity of the "Torrens system" is enough to startle even the most sanguine law reformer. The saving in real-property transactions appears equivalent to a reduction in cost from pounds to shillings, and in time from months to days. A landowner can obtain a loan on mortgage as quickly and cheaply as a trader obtains an advance on dock warrants or by the discount of a bill. In New South Wales, where most working.men become landowner, it is stated by Mr. Holt, many years a Member of the Legislative Council, that hardly one of them will attend a sale of land, unless it is announced in the advertisement that the title is under "Torrens Act." In New Zealand, upon 17,422 sales and mortgages, covering property to the value of £7,585,921, the average of costs upon each sale was only 22s. 9d. The reports of the colonial authorities on the working of the system which were called for by Lord Kimberley are unanimously following and emphatically favourable. We extract the

g passage from the report of the Registrar-General of New Zealand, as bearing on an objection to the system which has often been urged. in England :—" Titles complicated by wills, settlements, dm., are not unfrequent, and the system of caveats is found sufficient for the conservation of trusts, whilst life estates and estates in reversion or remainder are fully capable of demonstration on the Register. In fact, the

system, so far, has been found equal to all purPoses of conveyancing," Sir Robert Torrens now comes forward to advocate, in the little volume before us, which is published. for the Cobden Club, the adoption in England and Ireland of a system of land-transfer on the principle which has worked so successfully in Australia. And assuredly, he is entitled to speak with all the authority that belongs to a man who has actually faced and overcome the- practical difficulties of the question. We cannot, of course, enter in these columns into the technical details of the machinery by which the " Torrens system" is worked in the Colonies, and is proposed by its author to be worked in England. We may say, how-

ever (though the statement is scarcely necessary, with reference to, a plan that has been entirely successful), that it has in it nothing of that character of a compromise between antagonistic systems which belongs to the two English Acts of Parliament professedly establishing a registration of titles. The registered ownership,

of land once brought under the Torrens system, can be trans- ferred only by means of an actual record entered on the public register. By nothing short of this restriction can the necessity for retrospective investigations of title be got rid. of. In another respect, indeed, Sir Robert Torrens appears to us to go too far. It would seem that, under the Torrena system in the Colonies, land cannot be placed on the Register except after such an investigation of the previous title as jus- tifies the issue of a certificate making the title up to the time of registration indefeasible. The English Act of 1875, while pro- viding for the acquisition upon registration of an indefeasible title after an investigation, also permits persons in the actual possession and enjoyment of land to come upon the register and have the benefit thenceforward of the new system, leaving the. title up to the date of registration uninvestigated, and liable to be inquired into by purchasers until it becomes indefeasible by lapse of time. We think the introduction of the new system into England would. be effected much more rapidly, and with far less friction, if this reasonable alternative were offered to landowners. To the objection that under the proposed system_ the security of the varied and complex interests existing under entails and settlements might he impaired, Sir Robert Torrens replies forcibly and convincingly. We believe, indeed, that rich Australian squatters are quite as fond of founding families, of perpetuating names and arms, and of other devices of settlers, as are the possessors of newly acquired riches at home, and we have never beard of any complaint from Australia that the Torrens system made entails or settlements less secure. Prom. New Zealand, as we have seen, the Registrar-General reports. pointedly in a contrary sense. It appears, moreover, somewhat imprudent on the part of the advocates of entails and. settle- ments, by opposing improved. methods of land-transfer, to en- courage the belief that for the security of entail's and settle- ments it is necessary that the ownership of all the unentailel land throughout the kingdom should continue subject to a grievous burden, from which, but for entails and settlements, it might be set free.

In some respects, we have in England. special facilities for- introducing an improved system of land-transfer. Instead of the rough and imperfect surveys available in Australia, we have the admirable Ordnance Maps now approaching completion, upon which every spot of land capable of separate ownership can be shown and connected, by numbers or otherwise, with the records of land-ownership constituting the Register. Mr. Shaw- Lefevre has pointed out that a new system of land-transfer could be first tried, with peculiar advantage, in the County of Middlesex. There is already a Middlesex Registry of Deeds, and though it is confessedly useless, or worse, in its present state, the long-established usage of registration existing in Middlesex would tell in favour of any new and better system. Probably also there is no other district in England in which the ex- tent and value of unentailed land is proportionately so large, or of entailed land so small, as in the Metropolitan County. Par out- weighing these advantages,we fear, in this land of vested interests is the opposition of the powerful profession of the Law. Con- veyancing, under the present system, forms one of the most profitable branches of a solicitor's business, and of course the public cannot be saved an immense annual expenditure in con- veyancing, and yet solicitors go on enjoying the advantage 01 that expenditure. Compensation for the loss of it, the future might possibly bring ; but men will not resign certain and pre- sent gains, in expectation of what is uncertain and. distant. The settlement of the question of registration of title may come in

five years, or in ten, or in twenty ; but it cannot come until either the opposition of the legal profession is disarmed, or the public demand for cheapness and simplicity of land-transfer becomes so loud and general, that all class resistance is over- powered by it.