To appreciate this enormous progress at its true worth, we must take the fact into account that it was precisely during these years that the nation released several sources of revenue which had previously been taxed; such as duties levied on the export of natural products, and on natural or artificial wines, and additional duties levied on importations, all of which represented a respectable number of millions per annum. Thus in thirteen years, from 1895 to 1908, the fiscal receipts have increased by £14,800,000, or by 194 per cent. Such a result cannot but be satisfying, and it would be the most eloquent proof of the intense vitality of the Argentine finances were it not for the still more rapid increase of official expenditure. This also has increased, rapidly and enormously, more often than not exceeding the revenue, and leaving each year a more or less important deficit, which, accumulating from one year to another, has finally to be converted into a consolidated debt, whether foreign or domestic. “The practical result of the budgets from 1863 to the present time,” says an official document, “has been an uninterrupted series of deficits.”[100] In the face of this situation the patriotic advice which the Minister of Finance, J. M. Rosa, gave the Government and the Congress in a memorable document some years ago, is more than ever applicable. “We must do our utmost to economise,” he said, “by restraining ourselves and reducing our expenses to the absolutely indispensable. It is only by applying ourselves to the work of simplifying our administrative services, by suppressing useless formalities and superfluous employments, by scrutinising the least details of the public expenditure, that we shall succeed in making large economies. It is certain that to purge the administration of its ancient vices, to sweep away all useless appointments, to refuse to find vacant places at the bidding of power and influence, and to establish the strictest rules of economy, is a task of no mean difficulty; but we cannot stop to think of the animosity and the vindictive temper which it may arouse when duty renders such conduct necessary.”[100] [Footnote 100: See _Memoria del Departamento de Hacienda de 1899_, by Joseph M. Rosa.] If Argentina truly wishes, not to compromise her lofty destinies, but to remain a centre of attraction to the labourers or the disinherited children of fate to whom she offers the resources of her fruitful soil; if she aspires to be, in the twentieth century, the great centre of the world’s emigration, as were the United States in the nineteenth century, she must obtain an administration both methodical and economical; careful of the public moneys, and at the same time open to all material progress. It is thus that she will win the confidence of men and of capital; that is, of the two elements which she must still multiply in order to become a great nation. CHAPTER II