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the cultivator who would then surrender his rights to the Crown in favour of the purchaser and this latter would be granted a Crown Lease on such conditions as to the payment of Premium, Crown Rent and Fees as the circumstances might seem to warrant.
Under the Chinese regine waste areas were frequently granted on easy terms subject, however, to an increase of Crown Rent, if the grantee converted the waste into agricultural land, or if he erected buildings thereon.
Land for which a Crown Lease might be issued would of course come under the ordinary law of the Colony as regards registration aud so forth.
Law.
But the ordinary cultivator should I think be spared for the present the technicalities of English
It is easy to see how the desire to avoid the expense of registration has complicated the land question in China by rendering unregistered transfers almost universal. Our aim should be to devise a system so simple and so cheap that the Chinese will find it more convenient to comply with the law than to evade it.
The Torrens System.
25. The best model is I think the system of Land Registration adopted in the Native States of the Malay Peninsula in the Settlement of Malacca which is a modification of the well known Torrens System, introduced by the late Sir WILLIAM MAXWELL. The peculiarity of this system is, that it makes the ownership of property pass by entry in the register: title by registration being substituted for title by deed,
Its main outlines are well described in the following quotation from Sir WILLIAM MAXWELL'S Essay on the Torreus System, paragraphs 4, 5, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29 and 30 :-
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4. Legal expenses incident to the sale and purchase of land were heavy, and every “addition to the deeds forming the chain of evidence of title increased the cost of "subsequent dealings.
5. It was, therefore, with a firm persuasion that great grievances were imposed upon the Australian Colonists by the English law of real property that Mr. TORRENS (now "Sir ROBERT R. TORRENS, K.C.M.G.) proposed, in 1857, in South Australia, a system "of his own invention, adapted from the practice attending the transfer of shipping 'property, which, reduced to its elementary principle, substitutes title by registration "for title by deed.
LL
"25. A certificate of title is issued to every person entitled to any estate of freehold in possession in land under the Act. Every certificate is in duplicate. One duplicate "is given to the proprietor, the other is retained in the Lands Titles Office."
The "certificates in the office constitute the register book, which, in the words of "Mr. TORRENS, is the pivot on which the whole mechanism turns. Every certificate "is marked with the number of the volume and the folium of the register book. "Crown Grants of land bought since the Acts came into operation are also issued in duplicate, one of which is bound up in the register book, and sneh grants are, "in all respects, equivalent to certificates of title.
26. So far, it will be said, the title is simplified, but how is this simplicity to be retained,
"how will future complications be prevented? This is the problem which the Act "endeavours to solve.
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27. For the purpose of facilitating transactions, printed forms of transfer, mortgage, lease, and other dealings, are to be procured at the Lauds Titles Office. Any person of ordinary education can, with very little trouble, learn to fill them up in the more simple cases without professional assistance. If a proprietor holding a certificate "of title wishes to sell the whole of the land included in it, he fills up and executes a printed form of memorandum of transfer to the purchaser. The transfer is "presented at the Office, and a memorial of the transfer is recorded by the proper "officer on both duplicates of the certificate of title. The purchaser, by the recording of the memorial, stands in precisely the same position as the original owner. If
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only a part of the land in a certificate is to be transferred, such part is described in "the memorandum of transfer, the transfer is noted on both duplicates of the original "certificate; a fresh certificate is issued to the purchaser for the part transferred ; "and the original certificate is noted as cancelled with respect to such part. This *process is repeated on every sale of the freehold, and it will thus be seen that every person entitled to a freehold estate in land under the Act has but one document to "show his title, through however many bands the property may have passed, and “such document vests in him an absolutely indefeasible title to the land it describes. "28. If the proprietor wishes to mortgage or lease his land, or to charge it with the pay- ment of a sum of money, he executes. in duplicate, a memorandum of mortgage, lease, or encumbrance, in the form provided by the Act, altered so as to meet the particular circumstances of the case. This is presented at the Lands Titles Office "with the certificate of title; a memorial of the transaction is entered by the proper "officer on the certificate of title and on the duplicate certificate forming the register "book.
The entry of this memorial constitutes registration of the instrument and a "note, under the hand and seal of the proper officer, of the fact of such registration "is made on both duplicates of the instrument. Such note is conclusive evide "that the instrument has been duly registered; one of the duplicates is then f "the office, and the other is handed to the mortgagee, or lessee. "title will thus show that the original proprietor is entitled to tb-
subject to the mortgage, lease, or encumbrance; while th "held by the mortgagee, lessee, or encumbrancee, will shew "bis interest. Each person has and can have but one d "shows conclusively the nature of the interest he holds, - "is indefeasible. If a mortgage is paid off, a simple "duplicate mortgage held by the mortgagee. This is "fact that the mortgage has been paid off is noted on a striking inconvenience of the old system is dor
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