480 REPORT—1905. 
Two parks of about 274 acres and 200 acres respectively Have been given tv 
the town within the last three years. 
The market is owned by a company under a concession granted by the late 
Government. The Town Council contemplates the establishment of a municipal 
market. 
The public library is a subscription one, the reading room only being free, and 
is managed by a committee mostly composed of subscribers, but on which the 
Town Council is represented, as it makes an annual grant. 
The only poor-relief duty imposed on the municipality is that of burying dead 
paupers, but the Town Council contributes to local charitable institutions. 
The hospital is managed by a board nominated by the Government, which con- 
tributes about two-thirds of the total revenue. Both paying and non-paying 
patients are admitted. 
The police are under Government control. 
Primary education is provided for by the Government, and is free, but not com- 
pulsory. The Government also maintains fee-paying secondary schools, and a 
technical institute, to the funds of which the Government contributes, has been 
established, 
2, A Search for General Principles concerning the Relation between Central 
and Local Government Finance. By Epwin Cannan, M.4., LL.D. 
Why should there be any local government finance? Why not have a common 
purse for the whole country? ‘ Historical reasons’ are not sufficient explanation, 
still less sufficient justification. The separation of local finance is necessary, in the 
first place, to secure efficient administration, which is impossible without the rivalry 
and variety which result from the existence of large numbers of independent 
administrative bodies. Secondly, it is necessary in order to secure that the capital 
of the country is invested in the best way and the population settled in the most 
suitable places. 
Without it the central Government would practically have to decide every 
question concerning the economic development of the country. Under present 
circumstances no Government could do this as well as it is done by allowing 
localities freedom to spend or not to spend as they see fit; even if a Government 
had the will and the wisdom necessary, which is impossible, it would be prevented 
by the fact that the economically correct course would often be flagrantly unjust 
in the absence of local taxation. 
Local governments, while socialistic as regards the persons within their areas, 
are individualistic as regards the central Government. Much of their expenditure 
is of the same nature as the ordinary expenditure of an individual, while some 
resembles that part of an individual’s expenditure which goes in taxation. In 
regard to both the treatment of the locality should be the same as that of the 
individual ; z.c., the part resembling normal expenditure should be left entirely 
alone, and, in regard to the other part, the State should endeavour to combine 
economy and the accepted ideas of equitable taxation as well as possible. To attain 
this end subsidies from central to local exchequers wili sometimes be necessary. 
The exact basis on which they should be given must be worked out in each case 
with regard to the particular circumstances, 
3. The Rise and the Growth of the Protection of Industrial Property in 
the Transvaal. By Joun A. Buckniy, ILA. 
The value of those rights included in the phrase ‘industrial property’ has in 
these times of rapid scientific advance and keen commercial competition increased 
with quick strides. Any civilised community of modern days finds, soon 
after it has assumed a fairly settled existence, that its members desire legal or 
statutory assistance for the determination and preservation of various more or less 
personal privileges which, by the test of time and practice, have been found in other 
