Real Property Act. 33 



" This question arises alike in all cases. It arises in every case 

 of mortgage and encumbrance, and, as a general rule of convey- 

 ancing before the Act passed was to provide for the total 

 exoneration of the purchasers from such responsibility, the effect 

 was to render the power of sale, in point of title, really absolute ; 

 being conditional only as regarded the liability of the mortgagee 

 for breach of trust in the event of his exercising it improperly. 



" To exonerate the Land Titles Department from the same 

 responsibility does not alter the case in any way or degree as 

 regards the mortgagor or owner. But, if this be admitted, then 

 it follows that the business of the department is (subject only to 

 the restraint of caveats) reduced in all cases of transfer to this 

 single question — Is the signature of the owner, or of the donee of 

 the power (as the case may be) duly authenticated ? 



" IN ow there is, I will venture to say, no settlement, however 

 complicated, that can give rise to any difficulty that is not capa- 

 ble of being met in the same way. Wherever the legal estate is 

 vested in trustees having full powers of sale there is absolutely 

 no distinction between the old and the new law, unless it be in 

 favour of the latter, as respects the greater facility of checking 

 fraud in trustees by obtaining time to apply to a Court of equity 

 through a caveat, or by the entry of the 'No survivorship' memo- 

 randum. The legal title is for all purposes of registration 

 precisely of the same simplicity as that of property unaffected by 

 any trust, the ownership and the right of disposition being united 

 in the same person, and both resting on the mere fact of registered 

 ownership. But, even if trustees be not interposed for all the 

 purposes of the settlement, and that there should be successive 

 tenancies for life, powers of appointment, among children or 

 charges of annuities or portions, still there is no special difficulty 

 in ascertaining the person entitled to receive a certificate of 

 title as tenant for life, merely because it is derived under a 

 settlement which also creates by the same instrument either 

 contingent or expectant interests in the property. And all 

 those other interests must resolve themselves into estates in 

 remainder, or into powers of sale, either direct or incidental to 

 and in aid of charges of encumbrances. With regard to estates 

 in remainder, these are quite as easily dealt with as an estate 

 inherited or passing to a devisee. A tenancy in tail adds nothing 

 to the difficulty in tracing the proper heir, and a strict settle- 

 ment only prescribes a mode of inheritance or succession as 

 easily traced as that of an ordinary fee. The settlement or will 

 only strnds in place of the law ; nor does it necessarily render 

 the inquiry any more complicated, but generally, on the contrary, 

 simplifies it. So, with regard to powers and charges embodied 

 in settlements, there is nothing which distinguishes them from 

 every-day transactions for which provision is made, and for which 



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