Colonisation, that is, the peopling of the country, was inaugurated in the Argentine by the initiator of all true progress——Rivadavia——who founded the first colony of Santa Catalina. This work was intelligently and enthusiastically continued by Mitre and Rawson, in 1863: it was then vigorously pushed by Sarmiento during his extremely progressive administration; but as a matter of fact, in spite of all these efforts, colonisation has not given the results that were expected of it. To explain this lack of success, we must suppose that the work has not been promoted according to the indications of science and experience, and that a variety of events, uncontrollable by the human will, has thwarted the praiseworthy intentions of the Government. Otherwise it is impossible to account for the fact that the Republic contains less than 6 million inhabitants, whereas its soil would support 100 millions. To attain the primordial object of peopling the country, the Argentine has had at its disposal, among others, one very important means——the public lands——a means which other nations in similar circumstances have employed with excellent results, but which in this case has unhappily not produced the same happy effect, being manipulated by inexperienced or thoughtless hands. Various laws have been voted in the Argentine, tending to augment the population by means of colonisation. All systems have been tried successively, and one and all have failed. “This failure,” says M. Eleodore Lobos, in an extremely instructive volume published under the modest title, “Notes on the Land Laws” (_Annotations sur la législation des terres_), “is an incontestable fact, and must be attributed not only to economic, administrative, and political conditions, but also to the freedom with which the soil has been divided into lots of enormous area, and the obstacles opposed to the easy and secure acquisition of small properties. In other terms, our politicians have effected the very reverse of a rational colonisation, and have established a system of large properties instead of subdividing the land between the colonists according to their productive capacities.” This error was recognised by the Government more than fifteen years ago; but the influence of speculators, who profit from this short-sighted policy, has been more powerful than all attempts at reform. “To understand the matter,” says the same author, “we have only to see with what indifference to the public weal the executive, during the last twenty-five years, has disposed of 67,817,000 acres of uncultivated soil, which formed part of the national domain. The laws voted were impotent to prevent the disposal of these public lands in large parcels, so that the disposal of these lands failed to draw the population which these vast domains could support.”