directly, if not more deeply, at the pocketbooks of the people who live here, as distinguished from those who have merely sent their money into the country. The Government Commission, under the guidance of the able Minister of Finance, Limantour, has made a long and exhaustive study of the situation and of the means by which to come to a satisfactory solution of a problem which is doubly difficult because Mexico is par excellence the silver country of the whole world by right of her preeminence in silver production. The sentiment which naturally clings to the use of the white metal is yielding to reason and to the logic of disagreeable facts, and there can no longer be any doubt that the gold standard in one form or another is soon to be adopted with the approval of the entire country.

By this one economic measure the whole course of the evolution of the Mexican nation since the beginning of the era of peace will be fundamentally altered, besides being immensely accelerated. The capitalistic age, properly so-called, the use of the stored energy of the investment-seeking money of two continents, the ceasing to toil bare-handed at tasks that require organization and machinery, will bring to Mexico a great increase in prosperity and an infinitely greater diffusion of the national income among those who work, whether with hand or with brain. It is the lack of active capital that bars the upward path of the toilers, and opens idle and degenerate roads to the wealthy. All that the country needs in order to secure that tremendous internal expansion which is the birth-right of the virgin lands of the Western continents is a monetary stability that will insure to every effort its proper reward and give to labor the fruits of its toil.

Mexico.

MORRILL W. GAINES.

NOTES.

British Legislation in 1903. Forty-seven Acts of Parliament found their way on to the Statute Book as a result of the work of the session of Parliament which came to an end on the 14th of August. Of these acts, those of most interest to a wider public than that immediately affected are the Irish Land Act and the Education Act for London. Others of less interest, and yet not wholly local or particular in character, are the Sugar Convention Act, giving force to the recommendations of the Convention on Sugar Bounties, the Employment of Children Act, the Housing of the Working Classes Act, the Act for the Defence of Poor Prisoners, and the Motor Car Act. As a result of the war in South Africa, acts were passed providing for a Naval Reserve Force and Naval Volunteers, in order to increase the efficiency of the navy in case of war; to reorganize the Patriotic Fund, and to legalize the South African Loan and War Contribution. The budget, or Finance Act, also presented two interesting features, the remission of the corn duty, imposed as a war tax during the war with South Africa, and the reduction of the income tax from one shilling and threepence to elevenpence in the pound.

Among all these acts, the one which stands out as a permanent contribution to British statesmanship is the Irish Land Act. If the hopes centred on this act are realized, the Irish problem is a decisive step nearer solution, and in the future the political questions affecting Ireland may be dissociated from the unrest resulting from agrarian discontent.

An Irish Land Act is by no means a novelty. Mr. Wyndham told the House of Commons when he introduced his bill on the 26th of March, that there were already 40 or 42 on the Statute Books, beginning with Mr. Gladstone's famous act of 1881. These acts, however, fall into two classes-first those, headed by the act of 1881, fixing rents-determining the respective shares in the soil of landlord and of tenant; and second, those providing for purchase, which up to the present have been partial and tentative. The new act belongs to the second category, but is intended to be general and as far as possible exhaustive.

The first class of Irish Land Acts attempted the impossible, and have resulted in endless litigation and in the starving of the land.

Under the acts an Irish tenant may apply to have his rent fixed once in a term of fifteen years. There has been a second revision of many rents and these are known as second-term rents. Rents which have been judicially fixed only once are known as first-term rents. During the latter part of the term when a tenant is looking forward to revision, the temptation is to allow the holding to run down. Why should a man improve his land and bring out its full capabilities when his chief object is to get a reduction of his rent? In Ireland a landlord puts no capital into the land; all that he owns is the land itself. A tenant can easily make the intrinsic value of the land appear small in cases where, were the land his own, he could by a judicious expenditure vastly increase its productive power. The result of this partnership and this legal fixing of rents has been that agriculture-the staple industry, in most parts the only industry of Ireland-has languished, and the country has been deprived of much potential wealth.

Another objection to the first series of Land Acts is the enormous expense which has been entailed on landlords and tenants by the legal proceedings necessary for the fixing of rents, and the friction. induced between classes by the necessary position of antagonism into which they have been forced. To the country, also, the cost has been heavy. The taxpayers of Great Britain and Ireland have paid £140,000 a year for the expenses of the Land Commission, which administers the acts and £1,400,000 as the cost of the police-police occupied almost exclusively with illegalities born of agrarian unrest.

The second class of Land Acts includes the Land Purchase Acts. These acts have authorized the state to lend its credit to enable tenants to become owners of their holdings. Before the passage of the Act of 1903, 80,000 tenants had purchased under these Acts, and 73,000 had completed their purchases. Through these purchases the state has scarcely lost a penny. There have been but two irrecoverable debts, and these of inconsiderable amounts. In the first place the purchase money is secured on the value of the holdings, and secondly, what is more important as regards the prospect of success attending the new act, public opinion supports the punctual repayment of the purchase money and shows no sympathy towards the man who, having become the owner of his holding, fails through idleness or incompetence. The tenant having become the owner, has no further interest in starving the land, or depreciating its apparent value, but all his interest is in favor of improving it and getting the best and most permanent results from it.

The act of 1903 differs from previous Land Purchase Acts chiefly in its scope and comprehensiveness. It deals with estates as units, and not with fringes of land which the owners may elect to sell while withholding the best of their estates; and while not containing any compulsory clause forcing landlords to sell, it offers a bonus. on the purchase price which is expected to act as a strong inducement in bringing estates into the market. This bonus, which is termed the Land Purchase Fund Aid Fund, is in the aggregate not to exceed £12,000,000, and represents the contribution of the taxpayers of the British Isles to the solution of the Irish land question. Fears were expressed that the taxpayer might take alarm at so large a contribution, and it was carefully explained by Mr. Wyndham that probably not more than one-fifteenth of the whole amount would be required in any one year. The bonus is to be distributed to the vendors in the proportion of 12 per cent. on the purchase money for the first five years of the operation of the Act. At the end of that time there will be a revision of the rate in order to adjust the balance of the Fund to the value of the estates still unsold.

The value of the land of Ireland which may be sold under the Land Act is as yet a matter of conjecture. When Mr. Wyndham introduced the bill, he told the House of Commons that he had endeavored to form an estimate of the money size of the problem. To obtain this he had studied the statistics of the judicial rents fixed by the Land Commission; the statistics of the new Department of Agriculture; the statistics of the Commission of Valuation and Survey, and the statistics of the last census. Of these he considered the statistics of the last census the most reliable. "Now there are," continued Mr. Wyndham, "490,301 holdings given in these returns ; but of that number more than half, more than 56 per cent., are valued at £10 or under, and more than two-thirds, more than 69 per cent., are valued at £15 or under. You may take these 490,000 at a sort of average of £10 and from them you must make three deductions. You must deduct in the first place between 70,000 and 80,000 tenants who have bought. You must deduct in the second place a number of small town plots, accommodation plots, and market gardens which are urban and not rural at all. You must deduct a great deal for large grass farms, which are what are called Englishmanaged estates, and which in my opinion in all probability will never be sold, and farms which go beyond the limits of £3,000, which is outside the limit we are prepared to advance under this act, as it was under previous acts. If you make these deductions,

I think it is a safe estimate to say that the money-size of this problem is £4,000,000 worth of second term rents in any one year." The aggregate value of all the saleable land which is likely to come under the operation of the Land Act, Mr. Wyndham places at £100,000,000 sterling.

Under the previous Land Purchase Acts, the Government furnished the tenants with security, and the purchase was made through the medium of land stock. This plan has disadvantages. The medium is fluctuating in value, and a landlord is frequently unwilling to receive in return for his land securities which have not a fixed value, especially in cases where the land is heavily encumbered and there are mortgages and other charges to be paid off. Under the new act the advances are to be in money. The landlord is to receive cash for his estate. The money furnished by the Government for this purpose is to be known as the Irish Land Purchase Fund, and is to be raised by the creation of a new capital stock, called the "guaranteed two and three-quarters per cent. stock," repayable at par at the end of thirty years. The stock may be issued at such times and in such amounts as the treasury may direct.

The tenants purchasing under the Land Act repay by means of purchase annuities calculated at £3 5s for every hundred pounds of the advance. Purchase annuities may be redeemed in whole or in part by the payment of the difference between the accumulated sinking fund and the sum sufficient to purchase the requisite amount of stock. Under the terms of the Act, it is expected that tenants will obtain their holdings at from 18 to 25 years purchase. Sale of estates under the Land Act is not to be compulsory, nor is there to be a judicial fixing of the purchase price, as rents have been fixed under the former acts. The bargain is to be made between the landlord and the tenants, and then presented for approval to the Land Commission. The act, however, prescribes a maximum and a minimum limit to this bargaining, and the stablishment of the "zones" within these limits was the feature of the bill which aroused the strongest opposition on the part of the Irish members. The Land Commission is authorized to sanction advances in the following cases, namely:

“(a) In the case of the purchase of a holding subject to a judicial rent fixed or agreed to since the passing of the Act of 1896, if the purchase annuity created under this act payable in respect of the advance will be not less than 10 nor more than 30 per cent. below the existing rent; and