and the first to have been capable of moving them to take an active part in supporting them is the Unitario Party. The Argentine Republic is, then, the South American state that has most strongly made its action felt in its relations with the great powers of Europe.
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The affairs of the Plate have for many years attracted the attention of the French Chambers and the English Parliament.
The Times of London—the world’s leading newspaper—has concerned itself with Rosas five hundred times, no matter in what regard. The Revue des Deux Mondes, Le Constitutionnel, La Presse, Le Journal des Debats, and all the political newspapers of Paris have for the last eight years shown as much interest in the Plate as in any other European state.
The greatest orators of this century have brought their fervor into play one hundred times when dealing with the River Plate, and they are familiar with its affairs.
Argentine gold is the first to have been used by any state of the Americas to pay foreign writers, in Europe and on this continent, to write favorably and systematically about Rosas.
There is no press better known in all of South America than that of Buenos Aires, and in the neighboring states unlimited numbers of newspapers have existed destined to live in thrall to the affairs of the River Plate, in favor of either one party or the other. Those foreign newspapers, when not Unitarios, have been Rosistas, but always Argentine. Dealing with something from the neighboring country, they have paid tribute to it with courtesy and respect. Le gouvernement espagnol se fait journaliste,27 as Girardin once said: for a long time now, that of Buenos Aires has become Gaceta, British Packet, and Archivo Americano.
All this is all the more likely to flatter the Argentine Republic, all the more so given that it is the smallest state of all Hispanic America by population, with the exception of the Republic of Uruguay. It is difficult to find a smaller and more boisterous family in the world than the Argentine family. It would be rightly called a loud-mouthed charlatan if it were not the Spanish American state that has produced the most numerous and extraordinary things. It is the only one in which an entire respectable European army has been overcome without a single man escaping, nor a single standard. It is the only one where the reaction against the Spanish government was not defeated, not even for a single day, after the day it started, May 25, 1810. It is the only one to have defeated the empire of Brazil, beating it in battles and taking from it a whole fleet, an infinity of flags, and forcing it to relinquish, by means
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of glorious treaties, rights that it expected to hold onto all its life. It is the only one that possesses the standard of the Spanish conquest on this continent, the country that today receives greater spontaneous signals of something more than respect and consideration from the American states that surround it; the only one that in its recent wars, within and without, has aroused the amazement of all, for its constancy, its heroism, its ability, and its strength, whether this is judged in the person of one party or another.
In thinking of all this, any Argentine, wherever he is in the world, may see the light of May shine, with no regret for belonging to the nation of his birth.
However, all this is not enough. All this does not satisfy the true fate of the Argentine Republic. All this is extraordinary, lucid, surprising. But the Argentine Republic, in order to be a happy people in itself, has a need for more modest, useful, and real cases than all that brilliance of military triumphs and intelligent splendor. She has dazzled the world with the precociousness of her ideas. She has martial glories that peoples who have lived ten times more than she do not possess. She has so many flags taken in victorious combat that she could decorate her forehead with a turban made up of all the colors of the rainbow, or fly a flag as high as the Colonne de Vendôme, and more radiant than the bronze of Austerlitz.—What is the use of this, without other advantages, which, the poor thing, are still necessary in such number?
She has already done more than enough for fame; and very little for happiness.
She possesses immense glories; but, alas! She does not have a single liberty. May they be eternal, thank heavens, the laurels that she succeeded in winning, as she swore not to live without them. But remember that the first words of her revolutionary genesis were those three that form together a holy code and a sublime verse, saying: liberty, liberty, liberty.
Fortunately, she knows already, at the cost of blood and tears, that the enjoyment of that benefit is subject to difficult and gradual conditions that it is necessary to fulfill. Thus, if in the early days she was eager for liberty, today she will be happy with a more than moderate liberty.
In her first songs of victory she forgot a word less resonant than that of liberty, but which represents a counterweight that helps liberty to stay on her feet: order.
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One order, one rule, one law: this is the supreme need of her political situation.
She needs this because she does not have it.
She can possess it because she has the necessary means.
There is no law that rules the inner government of the Argentine Republic and the exercise of private guarantees. This is the most public fact that that country may offer.
It does not have a political constitution, and in this is the only exception on the whole continent.
There is no question now as to whether it should be centralist or federal. If it is federal, so be it, but let there be a law that regulates that federation; let there be a federal constitution. Although the written charter or constitution is not the law or the pact, nevertheless, she proves it, she fixes it and keeps it invariable. The written word is a need of order and harmony. The stability of any important contract is guaranteed in writing: what contract could be more important than the great constitutional contract?
Nor is there a question as to whether it should be liberal. Let it be despotic, let it be tyrannical, if it wishes, that law; but let there be a law. That at least is progress, that tyranny is practiced by law instead of by the will of one man. The worst of despotism is not its harshness but its inconsequence. The written law is as immutable as faith.
To say that the Argentine Republic is not capable of governing itself under a constitution, even if it is despotic or monarchical, is to imply that the Argentine Republic is not in the same league as any of the states of South America, but below them all; it is to imply that she is less capable than Bolivia, than Ecuador, than Paraguay, which good or bad possess a written constitution that is passably observed.
This is absurd.
The Argentine Republic has more means of organization than any other state of South America. What it needs is to coordinate these means.
Which of them possesses the most real, effective, and recognized power? He who claims to have the power, to have the foundation stone of the political edifice.
That power needs a law because it does not have it. It is objected, that with it the fact of its existence would be impossible.—In such a case, make it as despotic as one wishes; but give it a law. Without that law of internal subordination, the Argentine Republic may have a beautiful exterior,
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but it will be nothing within but a tomb of the living. Otherwise it is better to be Argentine from afar, to receive the honorable reflection of the glory without feeling the hero’s feet on one’s shoulders.
