The • Times special correspondent in Syria concludes his interesting
survey of the "Lebanon Experiment" in Monday's issue. In certain important particulars the scheme has worked well. "In most of the essentials of civilisation the province is far in advance of the vilayets." Public security is unchallenged, religious intolerance has largely abated, and education. has made great strides. Against 'these advantages must be set the serious drawback that the Organic Law contains no provision for its own partial or entire revision; the drain of emigration, which robs the province of some of its best elements ; and the arbitrary use of its powers by the Majlis el Idara,, or local Representative Council. Although no serious trouble ia apprehended, discontent is on the increase, and the Times correspondent specifies amongst the reforms most urgently needed the statutory limitation of the powers of the Majlis, the reassessment of the Land-tax (the levy of which presents gross anomalies), the delimitation of the frontiers, and the grant of a port at Juneh, Or, if that be impracticable, the restoration of the fertile Bkaa lands, which were filched from the province by the Porte more than forty years ago. In con- clusion, he notes that the principal defects of the Lebanon administration may serve as a warning to the future devisers of Constitutions for Armenia or the Macedonian vilayets.
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