468 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and had bought from proprietors 843,981 acres of land, and had sold 

 679,832 acres at an average price of $1.59 per acre. The usual Gov- 

 ernment terms of sale were one fifth cash, and the remainder payable in 

 ten equal annual installments, with interest at six per cent. On Decem- 

 ber 31, 1882, the last date up to which statements regarding arrears 

 were published, it was shown that by purchasers who had made no 

 payments whatever during terms varying from three to fifteen years, 

 $200,648 was due in arrears to the Government. A pretty general feel- 

 ing seemed to prevail among them that new concessions would be 

 granted delinquents, who as a class were numerous enough to make 

 the authorities charged with collection very lenient indeed to put it 

 mildly. 



In quieting disturbances and placing real estate in the hands of its 

 occupiers and users, the Land Transfer Act did unquestionable good. 

 In the passage and administration of the act a favoring of the tenants 

 and ex-tenants is most manifest. Before sales to tenants bes:an there 

 was a classification of lands according to value, and tenants usually 

 bought at prices somewhat below cost, and occasionally at prices much 

 below cost. Tenants in buying properties which they had cultivated 

 were freed from all arrears of rent due to the date of acquisition by 

 Government. Improvements of all kinds which they had effected on 

 their lands had been, and continued to be, their property ; as such 

 these improvements, houses, barns, fences, and what not, had entered 

 into no calculation of the Government's when buying and selling. 



Since the act went into operation a good many tenant-purchasers 

 have sold out their holdings, and, considering the value of their im- 

 provements, usually at a marked advance on the purchase price, bear- 

 ing out to some extent the complaints of the original proprietors that 

 too little had been paid them. It is difficult to arrive at the truth of this 

 much-disputed matter ; a fair approximation alone is possible. Wilder- 

 ness lands bought some years ago from the Government, and still unim- 

 proved, sell at a considerable premium. Cultivated farms do not as a rule 

 realize so handsome an advance, and in their prices is to be considered 

 the very variable element of value tenants' improvements. It is gen- 

 erally thought in the island that something more than the mere senti- 

 ment of ownership as distinguished from tenancy was sought to be 

 gratified by the land agitation. For twenty years before 1875 a suf- 

 frage practically universal was enjoyed by the island. A voting ma- 

 jority had it in their power to modify the tenure of property in their 

 own interest, and they exercised it through their parliamentary repre- 

 sentatives. To-day the effect of a habit of mind acquired in the years 

 during which concession after concession was made to tenants is still 

 plain. Arrears due the Government go on accumulating, it would 

 seem, with the expectation that in the future they may be wiped off 

 the slate. The tenants when they became purchasers had decidedly 

 good bargains ; they would certainly not have agitated as they did 



