Annuaire de législation haïtienne: the laws, decrees and arrêtés of 1904

The first year of Me E. Mathon's Annuaire de législation haïtienne, the private compilation that is the working record of Haitian legislation for the years it covers.

The 1904 review is dominated by the currency. The editor records that the high exchange rate made striking silver coin too costly in paper money, so the law of 11 August 1904 authorised a further issue of 600,000 gourdes in 5-centime nickel pieces, and notes the presidential arrêté of 20 May 1904 fixing the centenary design: Dessalines and 1804 on one face, Nord Alexis and 1904 on the other. On customs, a law of 5 March 1905 set export duty on coffee residues at two dollars per hundred pounds and another of 3 March set duty on lignum vitae at a dollar per thousand pounds, while the Senate finally voted on 8 September the customs administration and tariff law the Chamber had passed in 1898. On the budget, the law of 5 August 1904 repealed the 1899 measure that had cut public salaries, pensions, rents and subsidies by 20 per cent, and the law of 23 September fixed the revenue and expenditure budgets for 1904-1905, printed here with the departmental allocations in gourdes and American dollars side by side.

The volume also carries the law on Syrian traders, instruments on criminal procedure, the notariat and stamp duty, and the communal and contract material of the year.