value have already been noted. But they are a popular feature with the Stock Exchange and with the investing public which it educates, especially when the assigned revenues are periodically paid over to the agents of the bankers to the loan; and loans so fortified are likely to be more tenderly treated by a Finance Minister than those which have no special security attached. The mere fact of their being given, however, is a symptom of financial weakness.
In some cases, when the borrower is a weak or backward Government, they are a very real advantage. The Chinese loans secured on the Maritime Customs duties paid at the treaty ports and handled only by the foreign officials of the Customs Board are certainly made safer by the fact that the funds needed for their service are collected on the seashore and do no go inland at all. But such an arrangement as this is obviously exceptional.
State debts—that is to say the debts of the provinces that make up the Federated nations, such as the German Empire, Argentina, Brazil, etc.—should be tasted by the investor with a very long spoon indeed. The German States in pre-war days enjoyed, and with good reason, first-rate credit, which was only smashed by the cataclysm inflicted on
