Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 4.djvu/295

LAND TRANSFER REFORM. 279 verted into cash, or loans can be obtained on it, without loss of time, and without putting in motion the whole ponderous machinery with which the old system is overweighted. Suppose there should be a sudden panic in the money market, the land-owner by this system could effect a loan on his real estate in an hour while by the present system weeks might pass in tedious examination of title. By that time either the crisis would be over or the owner in insolvency. Ability to turn at once real property into personal is a great power. It adds enormously to the value of land. There is no good reason why real property should not pass from hand to hand just as readily as personal property. And when the Ameri- can land-owner awakens to a realizing sense of the disadvantages under which he now suffers, as compared with his Australian brother, he will not rest until a thorough and complete measure of Land Transfer Reform is fully established in this country as well as in Australia. John T, Hassam. Boston.