To these political changes correspond changes in manners and customs; the cities, too, have changed {97} and have lost their archaic character. The cosmopolitan invasion has resulted in a brilliant monotony, and interest has become the sole motive of action; permanent war is followed by peace _à outrance_; the republics have gained in wealth and mediocrity. It is a period of transition: we cannot yet distinguish the firm lineaments of the future State. Will the Argentine and Brazil become great plutocratic States like the United States? Will Chili, which is copying the social organisation of England, be subjected, like the Anglo-Saxon Empire, to the attacks of demagogy? The spectacle of these enriched nations permits us to affirm only that in revolutionary America four nations, the Argentine, Brazil, Uruguay, and Chili, will, before the lapse of a century, be definitively organised as republics. Yet these States still betray old racial characteristics. "The dead found the race," writes M. Gustave Le Bon. "The dead generations impose on us not only their physical constitution but also their thoughts. Forms of government matter little."[3] In the democracies of Latin America the "fundamental revolution" of which politicians boast has been sterile; under the republican mask the Spanish heredity survives, deep-rooted and secular. The forms vary but the soul of the race remains the same. President-autocrats replace the vice-kings; the old struggles between the governors of the State and the bishops persist, for patronage in ecclesiastical affairs, the prestige of the "doctors," and academic titles. The ruling caste, the heir to the prejudices of Spain, despises industry and commerce, and lives for politics and its futile agitations. The territorial seigneurs still have the upper hand as before the {98} Revolution. The ancient _latifundia_ still survive, the great domains which explain the power of the oligarchy. Assemblies exercise a secondary function, as the municipal _cabildos_ of old. Catholicism is still the axis of social life. The _picaros_ of Spanish romance, haughty and ingenious parasites, are still accepted at their own value. The bureaucracy swallows up the wealth of the exchequer; it was formed a century ago of voracious Castilians; to-day it consists of Americans devoid of will. Despite the equality proclaimed by the constitutions the Indian is subjected to the implacable tyranny of the local authorities, the curé, the justice of peace, and the _cacique_. Under other names the little despots of the Spanish period are still alive and active.