THE TORRES'S SYSTEM OF REAL PROPERTY LAW. 
G7l> 
only way to confer it was as of old, by giving it to the man and his 
heirs, and out of this doctrine arose the rule in Shelley’s case with all 
its complications. The necessity of using the word heirs to convey a 
fee-simple has been done away with in England, and it ought to be 
done away with in Victoria irrespective of any process of bringing 
land under the operation of tlie Transfer of Land Act, 1890. 
2. Another cause of complexity of language in conveyances arises 
from the Statute of Uses. This, as is well known, was an attempt made 
in the reign of King Henry VIII. to abolish trusts by turning them 
into legal estates. This object, as is equally well known, failed ; but 
the Act has had the permanent effect that language which, taken in 
its ordinary sense, would confer a legal estate on one man and a 
beneficient interest on another, often gives the legal estate to the man 
who appears to have only the beneficial interest. We have here 
another case in which an elaborate and awkward system has grown up 
of interpreting language in a non-natural sense. I can see no reason 
why this venerable statute should not be repealed, taking care by so 
doing not to lose the extended power which is conferred of creating 
legal estates and effecting dealings with land which could not be 
created or effected by the common law. The Transfer of Land Act, 
1890, or any of the Acts it supplants, has not repealed the Statute 
of Uses as to land under it, but has enabled the dealings which 
required the operation of the statute of uses to he effected without 
relying on that statute. Notwithstanding the Statute of Uses not 
having been repealed as to land under the operation of the Torrens 
system, so far as I know no question has ever arisen as to its 
operation with regard to such land. I presume this arises from the 
joint operation of two provisions — one that which prohibits the 
registration of any instrument which creates trusts, the other that 
which requires registration in order to pass a legal estate ; the results 
of which would be that either an instrument would not declare uses 
or trusts, and would accordingly not give rise to any question under 
the Statute of Uses, or it would not be registered, and so would not 
confer a legal estate. 
3. Another ground of complexity in conveyances of lands arises 
from the practice of drawing them so as apparently to make the con- 
veyance twice over — first in the premises and then again in the haben- 
dum. This practice probably arose from copying charters of feoffment 
where the statement in the premises, properly in the past tense, was 
intended for a record of the livery of seisin which had already taken 
place, and the habendum was intended to state with particularity the 
estates intended to be conferred by that livery. The forms prescribed 
under the Torrens system lay aside this practice, and there seems no 
reason why it should not be laid aside universally. 
4. Another ground of complexity arises from the covenants for 
title. The object of these covenants is to give the purchaser a 
personal remedy against the vendor in the case of concealed con- 
veyances by the vendor, his ancestors, or testators. They appear of 
little use in a country where a general registry Act is in force, and it 
would seem therefore the legislature of New South Wales might have 
provided for their discontinuance when it passed the Act G Geo. IV., 
No. 22, and it would seem that no considerable inconvenience would 
be occasioned by providing for their discontinuance. Another available 
