The budgets of various States complicate still further a situation already difficult. They increase beyond all measure, without the slightest relation to {382} the progress made by the nation. They are based upon taxes which are one of the causes of the national impoverishment, or upon a protectionist tariff which adds greatly to the cost of life. The politicians, thinking chiefly of appearances, neglect the development of the national resources for the immediate augmentation of the fiscal revenues; thanks to fresh taxes, the budgets increase. These resources are not employed in furthering profitable undertakings, such as building railroads or highways, or increasing the navigability of the rivers. The bureaucracy is increased in a like proportion, and the budgets, swelled in order to dupe the outside world, serve only to support a nest of parasites. In the economic life of these countries the State is a kind of beneficent providence which creates and preserves the fortune of individual persons, increases the common poverty by taxation, display, useless enterprises, the upkeep of military and civil officials, and the waste of money borrowed abroad; such is the "alimentary politics" of which Le Play speaks. The government is the public treasury; by the government all citizens live, directly or indirectly, and the foreigner profits by exploiting the national wealth. A centralising power, the State forces a golden livery upon this bureaucratic mob of magistrates and deputies, political masters and teachers. To sum up, the new continent, politically free, is economically a vassal. This dependence is inevitable; without European capital there would have been no railways, no ports, and no stable government in America. But the disorder which prevails in the finances of the country changes into a real servitude what might otherwise have been a beneficial relation. By the accumulation of loans frequent crises are provoked, and frequent occasions of foreign intervention. A policy of thrift would have led to the establishment of economic equilibrium. Foreign gold has {383} poured in continually, not only in the form of loans but in the shape of material works--railways, ports, industries, and industrial undertakings. It is in this way that English capital has accumulated in the Argentine, Uruguay, Brazil, and Chili, where it has become a prominent factor in the industrial development of the country. In the Argentine it amounts to 300 millions, in Brazil to 150 millions, in Chili to 51 millions, and in Uruguay to 46 millions of pounds sterling.