Side by side with the exportable products the revenues of the nation have also achieved an extraordinary expansion, which has enabled the Government to complete important public works, to perfect its administration, to acquire and equip the first fleet in South America, to spread primary and secondary education through its territory, and to push its civilising agencies to the utmost limits of the country. In 1898 the ordinary gold receipts rose to £6,416,440, while in 1903 they amounted to £8,879,420, and in 1904 to £9,345,708: but in 1899 there existed additional importation duties, which are now suppressed. In 1907 the receipts in gold amounted to £12,900,000, and in 1908 £13,600,000. The same increase is to be observed in the receipts collected in paper money. In 1898 they amounted to £4,201,495; in 1903 to £5,709,749; and in 1904 they rose to £6,086,753, although the duty on wine had been removed during the first half of the year. In 1907 these receipts amounted to £8,316,000, and in 1908 to £8,756,000; figures which represent an enormous progress. Thus a country in which the national resources and those of the Exchequer increase in so rapid a progression, is evidently in a position to support, without much anxiety as regards the future, the burden of its National Debt, however enormous the latter might appear. But such considerations must not, of course, incite the Administration to violate the financial principles of method and economy, nor lead it to increase the public expenditure at an unjustifiable pace, in order to meet parasitic requirements, or satisfy electoral demands. What gives rise to such fears is that when there is need for works of a certain degree of importance, such as would give a stimulus to the material progress of the country, or at least to endow the country with new buildings and constructive works, the budget never comes to the rescue, and the end is always an issue of internal stock. Of late years the Republic has enjoyed a pastoral and agricultural yield such as it has never seen in its economic existence. This double yield, the result of energy favoured by climate, was not only remarkable for abundance, but the prices which it commanded in the international markets were the highest that have ever been known up to the present. All would seem to indicate that in consequence of this abundance the Argentine Treasury would overflow with money; that it would be in a position to meet all the current expenses of administration, and also many of the extraordinary expenses which are demanded by a nation in process of formation for the stimulation of its material progress. Unhappily it has not been so. The ordinary revenue, like the national production, has exhibited a marvellous elasticity: but in spite of that it has not been enough to cover the ordinary expenses.