The Confederation of La Plata, the heir to the traditions of the colonial era, might be formed of Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay. Rosas did seek to create this great federal organisation. During the course of the century Uruguay has extended her sympathies alternately to the Argentine and to Brazil, and Paraguay, during a period of epic grandeur, defended her isolation. The union of these republics was prevented by national rivalities and the ambitions of their _caudillos_, but it will surely be effected in the future under the pressure of the power of Argentina. It is true that Uruguay has only too definite an originality in the matter of intellect, from the point of view of liberalism and education, but the federation of the future would not be the imposition of a harsh hegemony of one nation over others, but rather the co-operation of republics with equal rights which had at last understood the poverty of their isolated condition. Paraguay, remote and concealed, ruled sometimes by a Jesuitical and now by a civil dictatorship, has need of a place in such a vast confederation of cultivated peoples. These groups of nations will thus form a new America, organic and powerful. Brazil, with her immense territory and dense population; the Confederation of La Plata; the Confederation of the Pacific; Greater Colombia: these will finally {344} establish the continental equilibrium so anxiously desired. In the North, Mexico and Central America and the Confederation of the Antilles would form three Latin States to balance the enveloping movement of the Anglo-Saxons. Instead of twenty divided republics we should thus have seven powerful nations. We should have not the vague Union of which all the Utopian professors since Bolivar have spoken, but a definite grouping and confederation of peoples united by real economic, geographical, and political ties. To realise these fusions there are both economic and political methods. Hasty conventions would be powerless to uproot the hatreds and the narrow conceptions of patriotism peculiar to the American peoples. The organisation of the continent should be the work of thinkers, statesmen, and captains of industry, a work fortified by time and history. To the tradition of discord we must oppose another, the tradition of union. A series of partial commercial treaties, navigation treaties, railway systems, customs unions, and international congresses (like those recently held at Montevideo and Santiago) may all be indicated as means of realising unity. The railways above all will create a new continent; for isolation and lack of population are the enemies of American federation.