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more than five hundred defaulters were found, and on a notice being issued threatening'forfeiture of the land, almost the whole money was paid up. It was stated by Sir Henry Parkes, at a public dinner a short time ago, that the debt to the Government on the conditional purchases amounted to nine millions, and that the payment of interest last year was as much as £200,000. As soon as the three years have elapsed on all existing selections, the annual interest will be £450,000. The average extent of these holdings is said to be about one hundred acres. It may not be out of place to remark that the population of New South Wales is under 720,000 souls, the adult males therefore do not probably exceed 180,000. I am informed that the electoral rolls show a total of less than 150,000 electors. Hence even if, as is the case, a considerable number of selections are held by one purchaser, it may be inferred that a large proportion of the whole electoral body are under liability to the Government under the existing law. Whether this debt will ever be realized under such circumstances is a matter which some may feel inclined to doubt, especially as an agitation is already in movement in some districts —and a conference from districts has been recently sitting in Sydney —to get rid of the interest on the debt ■ a fact to which Sir Henry Parkes alluded the other day in his speech, only so far as to point out that if that interest were abandoned, £200,000 of annual taxation must be imposed elsewhere. The notices, in the public press, however, point ominously to an impending struggle to get rid of the liabilities of so large a portion of the population to the Government. The vast amount of book-keeping required by the conditional purchases has to be repeated, as is thought necessary, in the Audit, though apparently in a briefer form. From forty to fifty large folio ledgers are all in use in the latter office, and a new ledger is opened every year for the purchasers of that year Separate ledgers are also kept for the lands dealt with in various other modes. Pastoral leases, agricultural leases, auction leases, gold-mining leases, and mineral leases.

The lands in Victoria are administered by the Minister for Lands, subject to the exercise of certain powers which are vested by the Land Act of 1879 in the Hoard of Land and Works, and are sold under the provisions of that and two amending Acts. Speaking generally, the lands are either sold by auction or taken up by selection. The great bulk of the land dealings at present are under the latter Under the Act of 1869 selected lands were sold for 20s. the acre, of which 2s. per acre had to be paid yearly for ten years. For the first three years the occupation was by license, the land could not be assigned or sublet, and the licensee was required within two years to fence it in substantially, and to cultivate onetenth of it. Subject to these conditions, he was entitled, at the end of three years, to a seven years' lease with the privilege of selling or sub-letting, at a rental of 2s. an acre, and to a Crown grant at the end of his tenancy No more than 320 acres could be held by one person. All lands were open to sale by auction at an upset price of not less than £1 per acre, 25 per cent, being payable upon the sale, and the residue within a month. The rental of pastoral runs was fixed at Bd. a head for sheep and 4s. a head for cattle, upon the number which the run was estimated by the Board of Land and Works to carry By the Land Acts of 1878 and of 1880, the condition of lessees of selected land was materially altered by provisions which practically extended the tenancy to twenty years, with a rent of Is. an acre per annum, and there are now somewhere about 50,000 selections held under these conditions.

VICTOBIA,