COMMERCIAL STATISTICS. 203

The island revenue was formerly derived from ad valorem and specific import duties, land assessments, sales of public and Crown lands. Since confederation it comes from com- pensatory subsidies, and the two last named sources. The revenue of 1800, in sterling currency, \ 'as £28,742, and the expenditure £41,106 5 in 1865 the revenue was £45,360, and the expenditure £48,350 ; in 1870 the revenue was £02,230, and the expenditure £70,662,——thus the revenue has been increasing from 1860 to 1870 at the average rate of £3,400. The receipts for the year 1874 were $403,013, and the expenditure for the same year was $435,207. The reason why in this latter year the expenditure ex- ceeds the revenue is to be found in the fact of the large amount paid as compensation for land appropriated for rail— Way purposes. It is right, also, the statement should go forth that the expenditure, which was so much in excess of the revenue in previous years, has been owing to the judicious purchase, by successive governments of the island, of freehold estates. Indeed, from_1854 to 1870 the government bought. 445,131 acres of land, at a cost, in ster- ling money, of £98,435, of which 345,475 acres have been resold up to the year 1870. The money thus expended in the purchase of land is now in process of indirectly yieldinga profitable return to the island; so that for contracting tem- porary debt, successive governments deserve credit instead of condemnation. They have made bold and successful efforts to shield the people from the misery and ruin entailed by the reckless disposal of the land by the Crown, and from the gross injustice of successive home governments in not making full and honorable compensation for the evil con~ sequences of their action.

Mr. John Ings has placed at the temporary disposal of the writer a most interesting little manuscript book contain-