ith improved sanitation, naturally healthy and the operation of civil law to divide large properties and multiply ownerships, there is a corresponding spread of well-being in all classes.
The Argentine has been exceptionally fortunate in the quantity of Briti-h capital, amounting to £500,000,000, and the character of the immigrants, notably from Italy, that she has attracted.. Yet the progress of Brazil, lo, Pera Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia would appear to differ from that of Argentina rather in degree than in quality. It must presumably be several years before the South American Republics will affect the political balance of the world. Yet as their commer importance cantiones to grow, that day cannot be indefinitely postponed; and in view of the transformation we must not overlook the urgent warning that is given in many quarters against the decline of British trade, once supreme in a field of its own invention and enterprise. Foreiga rivals have begun to make themselves acately felt, and it must, be confessed that British firms do not appear to exert themselves to cope with the competition. Conse tive methods are tenaciously maintained, regardless of the consumer's demands; and in particular complaintsare heard that whereas British ships continue to spend twenty-two days between England and Buenos Ayres as they did twenty years ago, German and Italian steamers take but fourteen or fifteen days, and are making ready to cover the distance in even less. The one that we need not further en phasize, although it serves in a supreme degree to illustrate the importance of revising our notions of South America in this centennial year. In spite of all competition, Great Bri li holds a tremendous lead; and it is the manner in which she gained and used that ascendancy on which we would lay stress, recalling the example of a people so much nearer to our doors, and now restless convert old disorder into efficiency. British capital was poured into the Argentine at a time when that country may be said to have afforded nothing but promises, and little enough of those. So far from rejecting this assistance, from denouncing it as an enemy of sovereign rights, the Argentinos welcomed its advent as contributing materially tin the words of Dr. Zeballos) "to the consolidation of oar independence, to our civil liberties and to our actual prosperity." It is to be hoped that as the Chinese nation tarns its eyes abroad in search of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.