Leaves from a Madeira Gay^den 



habit " anchors many to Funchal. Towards 

 the middle of April the pressure diminishes ; 

 the homeward-bound steamers are full of 

 passengers, and for eight or nine months the 

 land will have rest. 



The number of more or less leisured people, 

 or people who are able to take a holiday of 

 some weeks at this season, appears to have 

 increased enormously of recent years. And 

 the money they spend abroad even for food 

 alone must represent a serious loss to our 

 purveyors, perhaps inadequately made up by 

 the money strangers spend in the British Isles. 

 When we have a Tariff Reform Government it 

 might appropriately ordain that every British 

 subject temporarily absenting himself from 

 British soil should be required to procure a 

 permit, costing, say, a pound sterling for each 

 week. This would make up to the country 

 what it loses by his absence ; It would enable 

 the tourist to feel that he was leaving his 

 country for his country's good ; it would 

 produce a considerable revenue, and tend 

 at the same time, with that happy double- 

 barrelled effect of protective measures, to 

 protect the English hotel industry — and, it must 



284 



