So far as the experience of the last eight years, during which the system has been in force, may be taken as a reliable guide, the experiment shows many signs of success. It has certainly checked the tendency to speculate in lands with a view to a rise in price, which threatened to become a great, as it certainly was a growing, evil. It has been found that it will not pay to do this in the face of taxation, and particularly of the graduated tax; and owners of large areas of land have developed a strong inclination to subdivide and sell lands which they formerly were disposed to hoard and increase. The power given to the government to purchase lands where the owners have objected to the valuation for taxation purposes has not been widely exercised, but several very important and considerable compulsory purchases of estates have been made in cases where associations of persons wishing to take the land on perpetual lease have applied to the government for that purpose. The chief benefit of such examples, indeed, seems to have been in compelling owners either to use the land themselves or to offer it for sale to persons anxious to use it; but from the New Zealand point of view this would appear to be almost if not quite equally desirable. Finally, the land tax has largely enabled the country to do without other taxes, which would necessarily have fallen more heavily upon the class of workers with small incomes, instead of being levied on the classes best able to bear them. It yet remains to be seen whether evils may not lurk, as yet unnoticed, in the system, which may impair if not destroy its usefulness. One consequence which was predicted by its opponents, however, has not been found to follow upon the introduction of the system. It was said that capital would be withdrawn from the country, and that poverty and stagnation would result. No such result has followed up to this time. New Zealand, with its less than a million inhabitants, is to-day looked on as one of the soundest dependencies of the British empire; it continues to draw to it from the mother country as much capital as it can profitably use; its exports steadily increase; and its people, if not rich, are well-to-do and comfortable.