cover, the power of that taxable capacity to shift from one centre to another owing to changes of trade conditions, and the unsound basis on which local rates are collected are disadvantages that cannot be altogether forgotten by the prudent investor.
On the other hand, there is this to be said of municipal debts, that they usually represent something more solid than the long series of wars more or less successfully waged, which are by far the largest asset that we can find to put into the balance-sheet against the seven thousand millions of British debt. But assets are of little advantage to the creditor if from their nature they are unsaleable and if they are not producers of net revenue. And the kind of assets that municipalities own—public parks, tramway systems, sewers, water supply and so forth—are not the sort of article that can be put up to auction and sold if the municipal area has fallen on such evil days that the municipality's power to meet its debt charges is doubtful. They are revenue producing, if at all, only as part of a going concern, and their "old iron" value is practically nil, if extravagance and bad finance on the part of the local authority should result in a level of local rates, high enough to check and reverse the progress of the area covered. We come back to revenue, as we
