[106] M. Alfred Neymarck has shown how broken a reed is any argument based upon the amount of debt per inhabitant, and how void of any scientific basis.
“We have successively passed in review the various countries of Europe, and by basing our arguments upon facts and exact figures we think we have demonstrated that in the evaluation of a nation’s credit, of the price of its stocks and their rate of capitalisation, the figure ‘per inhabitant’ has no value and no significance. Such statistics, which are more or less used everywhere, in France and abroad, by force of habit and routine, are absolutely incorrect and incomplete; they have only one sure result: they infect the spirit of judgment of those who rely on them.”—In the journal Le Rentier, for the 7th, 17th, and 27th of September and the 7th of October 1904.
The weight of the National Debt must be estimated by its relations with the economic system and the conditions of national development. For example, in making such an estimate with regard to the Argentine debt, we find that side by side with the increase of this debt there is a notable increase of the national wealth, which should keep all
creditors tranquil and satisfied as to the liquidation of the obligations contracted towards them on the part of the State, although these obligations might at first sight appear out of proportion to the means of the State.
If we take, as a mark of national wealth, the value of products exported, we have the following figures to go by: between 1890 and 1899 the value of the Argentine exports rose from £20,163,600 to £36,983,200. In 1903 it amounted to £44,000,000; in 1904 to £52,800,000; in 1905 to £64,400,000; in 1906 to £58,400,000; in 1907 to £59,200,000; and in 1908 to £73,200,000.
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