New problems arise from the relation between the size of the population and the amount of the capital imported. The increase of alien wealth in nations which are not fertilised by powerful currents of immigration constitutes a real danger. To pay the incessantly increasing interest of the wealth borrowed, fresh sources of production and a constant increase of economic exchanges are necessary; in a word, a greater density of population. The exhaustion of the human stock in the debitor nations creates a very serious lack of financial equilibrium, which may result, not only in bankruptcy but also in the loss of political independence by annexation. The solution of the financial problem depends, then, upon the solution of the problem of population. Immigrants will solve it by increasing the number of productive units, by accumulating their savings, by irresistible efforts which lay the foundations of solid fortunes. It is true that the wealth which they will create will also be of foreign origin, but in the second or third generation the descendants of the enriched colonists will become true citizens of the country in which their fathers have established themselves. They will have forgotten their country of origin, and will mingle with the old families which conserve the national traditions. The ideal of peoples whose economic condition is dependence is naturally autonomy; without it all {384} liberty is precarious. A considerable stream of exports flows from America to Europe to pay for imports and the interest on foreign capital. Only this large exportation of products, as in the case of the Argentine, Mexico, and Brazil, can maintain a favourable commercial balance. The Argentine economist Alberto Martinez has demonstrated that as in his country there is neither an economic reserve nor a national capital, the diminution of exports causes serious financial disturbances; exchange is unstable, the rate rises, trade falls off, and credit is suspended. In other countries the economic system is instability itself. It depends almost entirely on two or three agricultural products--coffee, cane-sugar, and rubber--and the incessant fluctuations in the prices of these products, which constitute the wealth of the country. One does not observe the regularity of the exports of the Argentine and Brazil, nor any important industrial development. To remedy the lack of equilibrium in the budget and to pay the interest on the foreign debt, the State, the guardian of the public fortune, once more resorts to loans. The creation of a national capital is thus an urgent necessity for these prodigal democracies. By stimulating the development of agriculture, by creating or protecting industry, by diminishing the budgetary charges by the reduction of useless bureaucratic employments and sumptuary expenses, the Latin-American governments could gradually establish the necessary reserves.