Turning from the shadows that obscure the picture of the financial and economic situation, we may, in spite of all, conclude that investors who have placed their capital in Argentine loans may be fully reassured that the interest will be scrupulously forthcoming. Although the majority of the loans have been employed in other ways than those intended at the time of their issue, it is none the less true that by their aid certain works of national utility have been effected, which could not have been realised without such resources. To cite only two, let us recall the fact that the nation has spent £10,976,304 in the construction of railways; while the Buenos Ayres Water Supply and Drainage Works absorbed £6,530,000. Again, as the great Argentine financier Señor Tornquist has said, we must not forget that although the country avoided a war with Chili it was only by allowing £15,000,000 to be swallowed up in ships and armaments; and this was done without recourse to the outside world for loans, after not less than £4,000,000 had been absorbed by military preparations in the interior. These sums, representing nearly a quarter of the present debt, were spent to avoid a fratricidal war, which would have cost us ten times as dearly. Apart from the fruitful application of loans, the creditors of the Argentine must also consider the sacrifices made by various Governments to defend and uphold the financial credit of the Republic. The service of the first loan contracted by the nation——that of 1824——was, as we know, suspended during the melancholy period of tyranny and national dissolution; but hardly was the Argentine family reunited, hardly was a regular Government established, when the latter hastened to resume the liquidation of the liabilities which had been contracted. President Avellaneda, in a solemn moment, has eloquently recalled the facts:—— “There is a new nation in the process of birth, possessed of the sentiment of its own greatness; either by a puerile hallucination or by the revelation of its destiny. It has barely formed a Government; but already it imagines vast schemes; it asks and obtains money from London; for capital, although she is represented as hard and having no bowels of compassion, knows often a sudden tenderness for dreams. “But the dreams of this people are quickly destroyed: then follows anarchy, with its long and lamentable lapses of self-knowledge: anarchy, into which young societies fall, by the very weakness of their native elements; until at length they are seized by the iron hands of tyranny, as was indeed the fate of Argentina. And a tyranny that endured for twenty years! Wretched nation! Unhappy Argentina! Her voice was all but dumb, failing in the depths of that abyss!...