the human intellect, however vainly or
preposterously employed."  The burden has been borne
quietly in England, because English land is
generally dealt with in estates of considerable
value. The cost of a transfer is indeed seen to
be enormous, when considered as the price of
an act that in Belgium, Prussia, and other parts
of the Continent, is a mere affair of an
afternoon, cheap, simple, and safe as an investment
in the public funds.  But, where upon large
properties it will amount only to a charge of
some two and a half per cent., its exorbitance is
not severely felt.  Land is not much bought in
England by the fifty or the hundred pounds
worth.  If it were, the costs of transferring and
assuring a too commonly uncertain title would
make amendment of the laws concerning land
what it is now in the Australian colonies, a
people's question.  Land there, in small and in
large quantities, is a staple commodity, an article
of daily sale and barter.  The delay, the cost, and,
the uncertainty of the result produced by the working
of our English law on the new lands at the
antipodes, could not be tolerated. One third of
them were held under titles believed to be more
or less imperfect, and were reduced accordingly
in value to their owners, when in South Australia
the waste of sheepskin was checked suddenly, and
dealing in land was made, by a new law, so simple
and sure, as to increase by from ten to fifty per
cent, the value of a large part of the soil.

The South Australian Real Property Act
closely resembles the scheme recommended for
this country two years and a half ago in a
Parliamentary Report by the Commissioners on
Registration of Title.  The timely appearance of
that report was indeed helpful to the passing of
the Colonial Act, of which the author and main
advocate was Mr. Robert R. Torrens, a barrister,
who represented Adelaide in the first parliament
under the new constitution.  This gentleman,
now holding the office of Registrar-General
appointed under it, devotes his entire attention
to the working of the measure.  How it works
he tells the colony in an instructive pamphlet,
printed at Adelaide; from which we derive the
information we are giving.

Under the Norman system of feudal tenures,
the greed of the clergy, working upon the
superstitions of the dying, who depended wholly
on their words, seemed likely to absorb all the
best lands of the kingdom into Church domain,
when the Statutes of Mortmain were devised
for the protection of the families of dying men
against the bequest hunter.  With the subtle
devices by which monks endeavoured to make
these statutes of no avail, began the costly
confusion of our English law of land.

It was held that lands bequeathed to be held
in trust by a layman for the use of a monastic
body were not bequeathed to that body, and this
side door having been opened, the old traffic
passed through it, of masses, requiems, and
benedictions for the patrimonies of the children
of the dying.  This abuse was attacked by "the
Statute of Uses," which defined a gift of
property to one person for the use of another, as a
direct gift to that person for whose use it was
assigned. This the ecclesiastical logicians met
by adding one twist more to their scheme of
evasion.  It was maintained that if Smith
conveyed to Jones, in trust for Brown, for the use
of Robinson, the statute would not apply.

Before there was a statute of uses, land
could change ownership only by a bodily
rendering up of possession in the face of witnesses.
The statute of uses—devised only to check a
particular evasion of existing law—was soon
found to make secret transfer of land possible.
A borrower of money upon land had only to
declare upon sheepskin that he would hold it
"for the use" of the buyer or mortgagee, and
it became thereby the property of the person for
whose use it was held.  Such a deed had to be
enrolled, but except against any one who would
be at the pains of search, it was a secret conveyance.
This also suggested to the lawyers a
more intricate method, by two instruments called
a lease and release, of transferring ownership
of land without making enrolment necessary.
This was the method in use until about twelve
years ago, when a form of conveyance by deed
of grant was prescribed by Act of Parliament.
And, at the present day, in England, although
Lord St. Leonards, who is the especial master
of all intricate details of property law, calls it
a splendid code of jurisprudence, he does not,
in his Handy Book, conceal this fact: "It is
peculiar to the constitution of this country that
the law on the same case is frequently
administered differently by different courts, and
that not from a contrary exposition of the same
rules.  It must sound oddly to a foreigner that,
on one side of Westminster Hall, a man shall
recover an estate without argument on account
of the clearness of his title, and that, on the
other side of the Hall, his adversary shall, with
equal facility, recover back the estate."  It may
sound oddly, for example, to the banker in
Hamburg or Frankfort who invests spare cash in lands
rather than in public securities, because the
value does not fluctuate, and transfer is so swift
and sure; or to the Belgian who is accustomed
to look on the soil as the great savings bank,
and to invest, as matter of course, any small
hoard in its equivalent of landed property.

The chief grievance of the working of the
English Real Property Law, is that when rights
have to be traced back through past generations
of owners, instrument upon instrument
examined, and every transaction scrutinised, lest
any outstanding claim be overlooked; this
childish process has to be gone through afresh
whenever there occurs a new conveyance.

Establish, therefore, a just method of registration
that shall recognise all rights, while giving
for a few shillings an indisputable title, with the
same power of absolute and immediate pledge or
sale that the owner of consols or the shipowner
possesses—and at once there is an end of all
these grievances.  It was during seventeen
years of employment in the service of the
Customs that Mr. Torrens became thoroughly
acquainted with the Law of Shipping. Why