worth 500,000 pesos, for "purchase and subdivision of land for agricultural colonization." (art.2) The lots "will be sold in cash or for a term of up to thirty years with a mortgage guarantee, which the P.E. can transfer to the Mortgage Bank by issuing bonds (art.3)." The same Power is also authorized to expropriate the necessary lands "for which purpose it is already declared of public utility" (art. 4), and said lands "shall be free from the payment of Real Estate Tax for a term of ten years and from executions and embargoes originating from debts contracted by the settlers before and during the first five years, except for mortgages." Also, to avoid the concentration of land, it is indicated that "no settler may buy more than one farm". On 6 February 1915, by decree of the P.E., "it was a matter of promoting colonization in a certain specialized sense; In effect, the Colonization Advisory Commission is authorized to buy land for forestry, granting properties with payment facilities to whoever commits to carry out forest plantations in a third of its surface." Various developments in public assistance and child protection also took place during Batlle’s second presidency. A presidential message from 1914, for instance, noted that "The function of assistance and protection of all individuals included in the law of November 7, 1910, has been carefully attended by the authorities who are in charge of fulfilling such a lofty social mission, dedicating their activities to the organization of services respective implanted in great part in the capital and that, gradually it is tried to extend to the departments of the interior. There are 11 assistance houses operating in the capital, including hospitals and asylums, and 12 hospitals, 5 aid rooms and a colony for the insane in charge of the National Public Assistance, with 25,811 individuals having received assistance in all of them during the past year, a figure which had not yet been reached in our country, which indicates the increase that the public service in question has taken." A Permanent Assistance medical service was inaugurated on March the 1st 1913, with "its true importance could be appreciated, proving its undeniable usefulness, to the point that there has already been a need to expand the elements it has, in order to respond, if not in a complete way, at least very effective, to the needs of the population. The