On Thursday was issued Sir David Barbour's Report on the
Finances of the Transvaal and Orange River Colonies. He recommends, to begin with, a tax of 10 per cent. on the profits of the mines instead of the .5 per cent. imposed by the Trans- vaal just before the war. This sum would probably yield £450,000 a year to begin with, and a good deal more later. As the dynamite monopoly will he abolished, the burden on the industry would not be greater than or as great as before. Sir David Barbour's estimate of the amount that can fairly be raised from the Transvaal—the Orange Colony will do little More than pay its own expenses—to meet the expense of the war is necessarily vague, but. he seems to think that possibly something like £60,000,000 may be found to be about the right sum.—That, with a Sinking Fund, means a pay- meat of about 22,000,000 a year.—At present, however, no such amount could be paid, but Sir David Barbour recom- mends that some sum of the kind should be fixed as an ideal, and that if in practice it is found to be too much the amount should be reduced.
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