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.”
The real beginning of Argentine immigration was when the tyranny of Rozas was overthrown on the 3rd of February, 1852, and a regular Government established, which voted a fundamental law of which the object was “to cherish the general welfare, and to secure the advantages of liberty to every citizen, to posterity, and to all people of the earth who desire to live on Argentine soil.” From this moment a powerful current of European immigration set in; turned aside from time to time by financial crises, plagues,[33] and war; but never completely arrested. Industry, commerce, and agriculture, which had so far slumbered, received a considerable stimulus from this new source. In a single year more immigrants entered by the port of Buenos Ayres than had for many years entered the whole country.