Again, in order to estimate justly the extent to which this debt weighs upon the nation, we must take account of the special conditions under which this debt was created; a factor which makes international comparisons difficult. It is not enough to know only the total of the National Debt in order to comprehend the financial position of a State; for it may well happen, as in the case of Australia, that the capital of the loans forming the debt has been employed in productive work, the yield of which contributes to increase the Treasury receipts. Neither can the amount of debt per inhabitant give us a true idea of the financial vitality of a country; for just as a given burden may crush one man, while another can bear it with ease, so, according to the physical resources of either, one nation may support a debt with ease which would utterly overcome another.[106] [Footnote 106: M. Alfred Neymarck has shown how broken a reed is any argument based upon the amount of debt per inhabitant, and how void of any scientific basis. “We have successively passed in review the various countries of Europe, and by basing our arguments upon facts and exact figures we think we have demonstrated that in the evaluation of a nation’s credit, of the price of its stocks and their rate of capitalisation, the figure ‘per inhabitant’ has no value and no significance. Such statistics, which are more or less used everywhere, in France and abroad, by force of habit and routine, are absolutely incorrect and incomplete; they have only one sure result: they infect the spirit of judgment of those who rely on them.”——In the journal _Le Rentier_, for the 7th, 17th, and 27th of September and the 7th of October 1904.] The weight of the National Debt must be estimated by its relations with the economic system and the conditions of national development. For example, in making such an estimate with regard to the Argentine debt, we find that side by side with the increase of this debt there is a notable increase of the national wealth, which should keep all creditors tranquil and satisfied as to the liquidation of the obligations contracted towards them on the part of the State, although these obligations might at first sight appear out of proportion to the means of the State. If we take, as a mark of national wealth, the value of products exported, we have the following figures to go by: between 1890 and 1899 the value of the Argentine exports rose from £20,163,600 to £36,983,200. In 1903 it amounted to £44,000,000; in 1904 to £52,800,000; in 1905 to £64,400,000; in 1906 to £58,400,000; in 1907 to £59,200,000; and in 1908 to £73,200,000.