As is insisted on very often in these pages, the chief need of these new countries is population; an end most surely defeated by conditions which not only repelled all immigration but killed off a large proportion of the men already there. There is good reason to believe that all this and more is now fully appreciated by every responsible man in Uruguay; and, once convinced of the right course to be followed for the country’s good, there is not a Uruguayan who will not follow it with all the patriotic doggedness which formerly caused the lamentable continuance of civil war. Both Argentine and Uruguayan financial policies and methods are now sound. Argentina is prosperous with great future increase of prosperity before her, and Uruguay is now well on the high road to similar prosperity and as brilliant a future. Both are at peace with one another and their neighbouring Republics; all of whom are much too busy with their own interests and too democratic in spirit to dream of aggressive war. Added to which only Uruguay and Paraguay are small enough to need ever to covet further territory. Brazil does not: Argentina has more than once already in the past refused to take Uruguay into her Federation: Paraguay, except as a constant nuisance to herself and everyone near her, is, and will be for many years to come, a negligible quantity in South American politics. The Andine frontier now fixed between Chile and Argentine is never again likely to be disturbed by either. Uruguay may possibly cast longing eyes one day at the rich grazing lands of Southern Brazil; but she is more than unlikely ever to attempt to acquire these by force. Their annexation by her could only occur on the initiative of the inhabitants of those regions; who, unless Brazil is able in the future to keep her financial and fiscal house in better order than at present, might very conceivably prefer to be under the Government of Montevideo rather than that of Rio de Janeiro. Even then, the question of different languages would present a difficulty to the assimilation of the State of Rio Grande del Sul by its Southern neighbour. One great step in the democratic progress of the Argentine Republic was made three years ago on the initiative of Dr. Roque Saenz Peña. This was the passing of a law which introduced the ballot and made the exercise of the franchise obligatory on a universal male suffrage of native-born Argentines and foreigners of two years’ residence.