THE PRAZO SYSTEM 201 



The prazos have come in for a con- 

 siderable amount of criticism, locking up, as 

 they do, some of the richest and most accessible 

 land in the Province. Theoretically any one is at 

 liberty to peg out waste land within a prazo, but in 

 practice no one ever does, because the prazo holder 

 under the terms of his holding enjoys pre-emptive 

 right of occupation over all land so pegged out. 

 No sensible man will spend his time and money 

 looking for a suitable piece of land on which to 

 settle if, when he has found it, the prior claim 

 belongs to some one else ; and no sensible prazo 

 holder would let slip such an opportunity to 

 acquire a good piece of land, the presumption 

 being that the selected piece is particularly 

 worth having or it would not have been selected. 



A second objection is taken to the fact that 

 in some cases the prazo companies do no agri- 

 cultural development or very little, devoting all 

 their energies to making what they can out of 

 the native tax and recruiting. One or two prazo 

 companies show commendable enterprise, but yet 

 even in the case of the most progressive I 

 estimate that only about 0'5 per cent, of the 

 total holding is under cultivation. Want of 

 capital is the reason given for this inactivity, 

 but this should not be admitted as an excuse 

 for an almost total neglect of cultivating enter- 



