Argentine 4 per cent. Gold Bonds (1900): Authorised, £2,828,515; issued, £2,752,855. Price on 1st January 1910, 91. Argentine Cedulas, Series B. (1886). These are certificates to bearer issued by the National Mortgage Bank in lieu of cash lent to borrowers on real estate. They were first issued in 1886, when a total of $50,000,000 was issued in three series, A, B, and C. They are redeemable by sinking funds of 1 per cent., and under Article 60 of its organic law the National Mortgage Bank has to add to these funds the sums in cash received from its debtors on account of advances of capital or sale of properties. Cedulas are guaranteed by the nation. In circulation, 31st August 1909, $1,175,250. Cancelled. $13,824,750. Interest, 7 per cent. Prices have varied from 24-1/4 to 48-3/4. Price on 1st January 1910, 44-1/2. Buenos Ayres Water Supply and Drainage Bonds (1892). Authorised, £6,324,400. Present amount, £5,620,820. The operation of the Sinking Fund in January 1910 will further reduce this amount. Prices have varied from 52-3/8 to 106. Price on 1st January 1910, 106. Buenos Ayres Sterling Bond 3 to 3-1/2 per cent. Authorised, £10,296,000; issued, £9,796,000. Price on 1st January 1910, 69-3/4.] Although the Minister who effected this operation, exceeding the advice of competent persons, or rather defying their judgment, took it upon himself to issue a fervent panegyric of his transactions in an official document, we none the less consider that the fundamental defect of this conversion lay in having largely reduced the amortisation rate of some of these loans, bringing them down from 6 per cent., 4 per cent., 3 per cent., and 2 per cent., to a uniform rate of 1 per cent.; as the sinking-fund, as a general thing, in the case of all financial administrations, and especially of those of a country without any great experience of government, is a restraining factor, a limit which Governments and Parliaments impose upon themselves, in order not to spend all they collect. Without this money-box, this “woollen stocking” of Governmental savings, as M. Neymarck called it, it is certain that there would be no trace in the Argentine Treasury of all the millions it has paid in amortisation during the last few years; so that the present generation would have cast upon the shoulders of the coming generation a far heavier burden than that the latter will inherit as things are. Returning to the external debt, we may state that among the loans which figure in the national liabilities are eight, with a capital of £23,350,139, at 5 per cent. interest; two, with a capital of £7,697,263, at 4-1/2 per cent.; eleven with a capital of £29,840,315, at 4 per cent., and one of £2,004,710 at 3-1/2 per cent. The public debt, external and internal, amounts to the following:—— External debt £62,892,428 Internal debt 16,839,365 ----------- £79,731,793