THE TORRENS SYSTEM OE REAL PROPERTY LAW. 
683 
put to much trouble to show that they were not identical with insolvents 
of the same name. Accordingly under pressure of the demand for rapid 
conveyancing which prevailed about the time of the land boom, the 
Legislature of Victoria altered the law abolishing the necessity for 
any notice by the Titles Office to assignees or trustees in insolvency. 
The consequence is, that as the law now stands an insolvent is quite 
free to deal with land under the Transfer of Land Act, 1890, until 
the assignee or trustee intervenes. Solvent persons are thus saved 
the trouble and expense of proving that they are not identical with 
insolvents of the same name, but there would seem to he considerable 
risk that an insolvent might defraud his creditors by selling land 
immediately after the sequestration and absconding with the price 
before the assignee or trustee had time to make the necessary inquiries 
to enable him to get registered and lodge a caveat. It would seem 
that the change went too far. and that the order of sequestration ought 
to bind the land for a certain time without being registered — say, for 
three months. This would cast upon a proprietor applying to register 
a dealing the onus of showing that his estate had not been seques- 
trated within the last three months, which it would not usually be 
difficult to discharge. If the system were made general of only 
binding land by instruments registered against it under the super- 
vision of an officer whose duty it was to exercise judicial discretion, 
there would be no difficulty in putting orders of sequestration in the 
same position as other instruments. 
The certificate of title stands in a different position from the 
other parts of the Torrens system we have been considering. They 
might be extended to all land by the mere fiat of an Act of Parlia- 
ment ; but it is impossible to entitle anyone to a certificate of title 
which will confer on him an indefeasible title against all the world 
without instituting a rigorous investigation into his title ; but that 
does not seem to be any reason why the rest of the law should not be 
made generally applicable — that is,* quite apart from the granting the 
certificates of title. There is no reason why the simpler form of 
conveyances which prevails under the Transfer of Land Act, or any 
simpler or better form that can be devised, should not be made of 
universal application ; why instruments should not he registered 
against the land to which they relate, and take effect so as to bind the 
land only from registration ; why this registration should not be made 
subject to the direction of a responsible officer; why a purchaser of 
one piece of land rather than another should be bound to concern 
himself with the trusts affecting it, or be affected by notice of an 
unregistered interest ; why a system of mortgaging should not be 
created which, while giving the mortgagee legal as distinguished from 
equitable rights for the enforcement of his security, would leave a 
legal interest in the mortgagor. The remaining provisions as to 
mortgages, and also as to executions and insolvencies, I think would 
be better amended than generalised ; but if the generalisation of them 
was desirable it might be effected. 
I may say that the obscurity of the law arising from the com- 
plexity produced by two different systems is by no means merely 
theoretical. I notice in particular that students often fall into error 
in consequence, and the student is the father of the practitioner as 
the boy is the father of the man. 
