Population rapidly increased after peace was thoroughly established, and has more than doubled in the last thirty years. In the late eighties the influence of the Buenos Aires boom extended to Paraguay, and the government offered great inducements to attract immigration. The movement was not very successful, but it had the indirect effect of transferring great tracts of land from government to private ownership. Previously, two-thirds of the land belonged to the State. One of the colonies was composed of socialists from Australia who promptly split on their arrival over the question of total abstinence. Those who insisted on being allowed to drink were obliged to leave. Subsequently, disagreements about doctrine and the application of the principles of socialism drove out others. The soil of Paraguay is marvellously fertile, but its isolation and the want of markets for the national products make it unattractive to European immigrants.
Happily Paraguay has not suffered from civil disorders during the slow process of national regeneration which has been going on since 1870. Most of the Presidents have served out their full four-years term, and the one or two changes which have occurred have not been accompanied by any bloodshed or interruption in administration. The chief difficulties of the government have been financial. Revenue is small and paper currency has been issued until it is at a discount of several hundred per cent. compared with its nominal value in gold; but since foreign commerce is inconsiderable and the population lives off the products of its own farms the results of inflation have not been so disastrous as they might have been in a commercial country.
The wave of twentieth-century progress and immigration may strike this Arcadian region at any moment, but up to the present time the body of the Paraguayans live much as their ancestors. Existence can be maintained with hardly an effort; the people can always get oranges in default of more nourishing food; the climate is lovely; the forests surrounding the peasant's cabin beautiful. Why should a Paraguayan work when he can live happily and comfortably without labour, merely to procure things which to him are superfluities? It must be remembered that the bulk of the Paraguayan people are descended from the Indians which were found crowded into this garden spot three centuries ago by the Spaniards and the Jesuits. They have never lost their simple, submissive, stoical character, and the rule of the three dictators did not tend to change them. The modern improvements of which they saw most during the reign of Lopez were muskets and cannon, and they can hardly be blamed for preferring old-fashioned ways after their experience during the war. Though the nation was almost destroyed, the surviving remnants show the same characteristics which distinguished their ancestors. The new Paraguay, however, is not ruled by any bloody-minded despot, and the military possibilities of the people will never again be a menace to the liberties of the surrounding nations. Rather is the present ruling class disposed to welcome foreign influences and immigration, and this beautiful, fertile, and easily accessible country stands open to the world.
URUGUAY
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