It is only astonishing how this little State contrived, as she did, to raise the ways and means for these efforts, and that she did not altogether succumb to the difficulties and embarrassments they gave rise to:--that they have left her finances in a wretched state can hardly be wondered at. Nevertheless, if it had not been for the struggle with Brazil, which succeeded the establishment of her own independence of the mother-country, Buenos Ayres would long ago have been quit with all her creditors, presenting a very different appearance, quoad her finances, to the world.
When the struggle with Spain was over, and her military establishments reduced, the arrangement of her pecuniary affairs became one of the first objects of her provincial administration.
In 1821 commissioners were appointed to call in and liquidate all outstanding claims against the government, of whatever description, not excepting even those left unsettled by the authorities of the mother-country previous to the declaration of independence. The greater part of these debts were due for actual services, or for loans to the government in times of necessity; others were of a more doubtful character, and had been sold or made over to other parties by the original creditors, and into these classes they were separated by the legislature:--the one receiving obligations bearing an interest of six per cent; the other, receiving the same, bearing an interest of four per cent per annum; and these obligations were simultaneously provided for by the creation of public stocks, bearing quarterly interest:--the first instance of the establishment of anything like a public funded debt in any of the new states of South America. Commissioners were appointed to manage it, and to pay the dividends quarterly to the stock-holders; transfer-books were opened, and a sinking-fund was established for its gradual redemption. The first quarter's interest became due on the 1st of January, 1822, and, for the credit of Buenos Ayres, it should be stated that, notwithstanding the great subsequent increase of the debt, under the circumstances to which I shall presently refer, the quarterly dividends have, from that time to this, been as regularly paid as those at the Bank of England.