A HANDBOOK OF PRACTICAL AND POLITICAL INFORMATION OF SIAM.
Siam: a Handbook of Practical and Political Information. By A. W. Graham. (A. Meting. 10s. 6d, not.)—The actualities and the potentialities of Siam are alike interesting. The country has an area of 200,000 square miles, with a population of about six millions. The two great divisions—the Thai and the Lao—are closely related in race : these number about three-fourths of the whole ; the Chinese, estimated at 400,000, are the most conspicuous foreign element ; the Malays come next to them. Rice is the chief export, the average quantity being 850,000 tons. With a developed system of irrigation and by bringing under cultivation large tracts still lying waste, there would be a great increase. The Siamese rulers are waking up to what they can and ought to do. They are, to say the least, fairly progressive and enlightened. The reader will find a quite interesting record of what they have been endeavouring to do in various departments of political and social life. It is not every Oriental Government that is seriously interested in the sources from which it draws its revenues. Pecunia non olet is an adage much appreciated in the East, and the Siamese are to be praised for their discontent with the fact that half the public revenue came from gambling, liquor, and opium. The proportion has now been reduced to a third. There is probably no civilized country in the world where the rulers count for more. The temper of the Siamese people favours absolutism. The system worked to great advantage in the person of King Chulalonkorn, whose reign of thirty-seven years (reckoned from the time of his attaining his majority) did much to regenerate the country.
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