AGRICULTURAL CREDIT.—DAVIDSON. A477 
to pay their taxes, to pay rent, and to pay the money lender. 
They raise money by mortgage in order that they may travel, and 
that they may expend it in extravagant living; they speculate 
with it, and they relend it. Politicians pay their political debts 
by means of mortgages. Wives pay the debts of their husbands 
and educate them for the ministry. Men mortgage their real 
estate te pay their physician, their undertaker, and their lawyers, 
to help their friends and relatives to make good their defalca- 
tions, to educate their children, and to support their parents.” 
(U.S. Census, 1890, Mortgage Vol., p. 279). But after all, loans 
for such purposes form but a small part of the whole, not 6 per 
cent. of the number, not 2 per cent. of the amount in the United 
States; and probably this proportion holds true of Canada, 
although we have no definite information. Most of the mort- 
gages are incurred to effect improvements of a more or less 
permanent character. 
Information is lacking regarding the rate of interest which 
is paid on mortgages in Canada. There is no doubt that it is 
high, although in New Brunswick, at least, the rate is falling, 
and corporations which have money which they must invest in 
first-class securities are being foreed to consider whether it is 
worth while to invest in mortgages which now bring a grudging 
six per cent. only, with a prospect that five will soon be all that 
is obtainable. It is because the rate of interest is high that 
there is a demand in some quarters that the state should place 
its credit at the disposal of the farmers to enable them to borrow 
at less than the present market rate. Such a proposal is regarded 
with great alarm in some quarters, but there is ample and 
conservative precedent for it. The English Royal Commission 
on Agriculture, recognizing the demand for “ increased outlay on 
improvements necessitated by changes in agriculture,” recom- 
mended state loans to farmers, for which they claimed rightly 
that there was ample precedent in English agrarian legislation. 
The gist of the evidence laid before this commission brings out, 
according to Mr. Wolff (People’s Banks, p. 54,) that “ wherever 
in agriculture there is ample command of money for working a 
