A brief examination of each of these causes will suffice to show that they have been truly presented, and will also demonstrate the degree in which the phenomenon we are studying exhibits itself. The influence of the first factor is assured and indisputable; it is enough to enounce it; it will be admitted without further criticism. The increase of the Argentine population, although it is not precisely all that might be desired, because it is not equally distributed, being larger on the coast than in the interior, is none the less considerable. The first national census of 1869 gave a population of 1,877,000 for the whole country; that of 1895 gave 4 millions; an increase of more than 2,100,000, or of 4·8 per cent. per annum. Since 1895, although the Constitution orders a ten-yearly census, no census has actually been taken. But according to the most reliable calculations, the population of the Argentine amounts at present to more than 6 millions of inhabitants. It is obvious that an increased population must also mean an increased administrative expenditure, as more telegraphs are needed, more bridges, roads, and railways, a larger police service, more lawyers and judges, and more schools and teachers. No sensible person would pretend that the national expenditure could remain unchanged, while all else was developing and prospering. If the national revenue increases at an extraordinary rate, on account of the development of the population, it is only logical that the expenditure should increase likewise; but in a less proportion, it is true, as is proper under a good administration. But this is not to say that it is permissible for administrators entrusted with the annual duty of presenting an estimate of public expenditure to do what is occasionally done, with such deplorable results——to estimate also in an exaggerated fashion the increase of the population, in order all the more to inflate the budget. The profound financial crisis, which affected the country in 1890, had no other cause. Everything is risked by the abuses of official expenditure. We have the proof of this in the fact that the economic possibilities of the country have never been so great as in these moments of financial crisis. The continual increase of the public debt is another of the causes of exaggerated budgets. Since the first loan of £1,000,000, contracted by the Province of Buenos Ayres in 1822, which was later transferred to the account of the nation, until the present time, when, if no new loans have been contracted, at least the Government has put into circulation millions of stock which it was holding in reserve, the public debt has done nothing but increase, and in considerable proportions, attaining in 1909 to an amount of $371,000,000 gold and $237,000,000 paper, or £95,000,000 in all; and this, without including the last loan of £10,000,000 contracted by the Government in March 1909.