Uruguay Round Agreements Act

“ During any negotiations on agricultural subsidies, the United States Trade Representative shall seek to establish the common base year for calculating the Aggregated Measurement of Support (as defined in the Agreement on Agriculture) as the end of each country's Uruguay Round implementation period, as reported in each country's Uruguay Round market access schedule. ”

“ A successful Uruguay Round of world trade negotiations will create more real jobs, and more real growth, for all nations. You and I know that if the playing field is level, America's workers and farmers can outwork and outproduce anyone, anytime, anywhere. ”

“ This would be alike opposed to the wishes and the interests of the Monte Videans themselves, to the interests of a large portion of South America, and to those of the nations trading with it. A small Independent State, like the Republic of Uruguay, governed as it has ever been since the date of its independence on the most liberal commercial principles, is the best of all checks on the commercial illiberality of the neighbouring countries, and is much too valuable to be sacrificed by the Government of any commercial nation which has at heart the prosperity of its subjects. ”

“ The union of these republics was prevented by national rivalities and the ambitions of their caudillos, but it will surely be effected in the future under the pressure of the power of Argentina. It is true that Uruguay has only too definite an originality in the matter of intellect, from the point of view of liberalism and education, but the federation of the future would not be the imposition of a harsh hegemony of one nation over others, but rather the co-operation of republics with equal rights which had at last understood the poverty of their isolated condition. ”

“ A treaty of commerce has been concluded between the United States and the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, which will be laid before the Senate. Should this convention go into operation, it will open to the commercial enterprise of our citizens a country of great extent and unsurpassed in natural resources, but from which foreign nations have hitherto been almost wholly excluded. ”

“ As its near neighbor and relative, Paraguay, is perhaps at the bottom of the scale governmentally, so Uruguay, by its national spirit, its energetic character, and its advanced legislation is probably at the top, more nearly fulfilling the requirements of an independent state than any other nation south of the United States. Certainly it is superior to both Chile and Brazil in everything but size, and it is doubtful whether even the Argentine is governed with more intelligence and general honesty. ”

“ In Uruguay there always has been much less tendency to intrigue. There, a man was a Red or a White, a conscientious supporter of the Rural or Urban party. While as for Finance the Commercial Community has always and unswervingly seen to it that its realm be kept clean and untarnished by even the breath of scandal. It may here be objected that now and again, foreign concessionaires have made bargains with the National Government strangely profitable to themselves. ”

“ As for Uruguay, her chief reliance must be on the deep patriotism of her leading men and on their good sense to keep a peace which is the only true road to the general prosperity of a country the rich natural endowments of which cannot develop if men and horses are taken from the plough, as they constantly were in the past by one party or the other, to partake in the mutual destruction of civil war. ”

“ Although Uruguay is as much of an absolute monarchy to-day as exists on the face of the earth, her people have peace and prosperity, her development is being hastened by large works of internal improvement, her population is increasing rapidly, her commerce is assuming immense proportions, and she is making more rapid strides towards greatness than any other country in South America, except her neighbor across the River Plate. ”

“ As is insisted on very often in these pages, the chief need of these new countries is population; an end most surely defeated by conditions which not only repelled all immigration but killed off a large proportion of the men [35] already there. There is good reason to believe that all this and more is now fully appreciated by every responsible man in Uruguay; and, once convinced of the right course to be followed for the country’s good, there is not a Uruguayan who will not follow it with all the patriotic doggedness which formerly caused the lamentable continuance of civil war. ”

“ The one is progressive and wealthy, the other backward and poor. Their boundaries are far from each other, separated by portions of Brazil and Argentina, but they are united by the great waterways of the Plate, as we have already seen.
If Uruguay is a small country in point of area, being about the size of the British Isles, which is not large in comparison with the vast areas of territory of her neighbours on the Continent, the Republic contains much that is important, both as regards its own life and development and its relations with foreign lands. ”

“ The Belgian is a good worker, but he is much more “insular” than the British in his scorn of ways of living which differ from his own. He is not adaptable enough, in any way, to be put to live or work among the composite Spanish-Italian-American rural classes of the River Plate.
Probably both Argentine and Uruguayan will continue to work out his own salvation in this vital matter of attracting agricultural colonists to his land. Already the spirit of democratic unrest menaces privilege in Argentina, privilege which has already been destroyed in Uruguay. ”

“ It is obvious that a country in a chronic condition of disorder is a very inconvenient neighbour, and Uruguay would long have ceased to exist as a separate government, if it were not for the jealousy of the two powerful adjoining states. Brazil and283 Argentaria38 are each ready and willing to put down the enfant terrible, but neither would tolerate the annexation by its rival of such a desirable piece of territory. The prospect of a long and sanguinary war has hitherto withheld the Governments of Rio and Buenos Ayres, and secured, for a time, immunity to Uruguayan disorder. ”

“ Thus, these two debtor nations have actually become creditors to Europe, and are proceeding to gather into national ownership a large part of the national debt. Uruguay is taking another and most striking step towards economic consolidation. She is preparing to avail herself of the growing national wealth and the increased value of the Uruguayan dollar in order to buy up enterprises owned by foreigners within her territory, particularly the railways, which are mostly in British hands. ”

“ After a short time it becomes the turn of a rival, who, with loud promises of reform, and flights of patriotic rhetoric, raises the standard of revolt. If he can succeed in getting enough of the troops to join him, the revolution is made, and Uruguay has a new president, whose history will be a repetition of that of his predecessors. If the pretender should fail, he is summarily shot, unless he be fortunate enough to make his escape into the adjoining territories of Brazil or Argentaria. ”

“ Both Argentine and Uruguayan financial policies and methods are now sound. Argentina is prosperous with great future increase of prosperity before her, and Uruguay is now well on the high road to similar prosperity and as brilliant a future. Both are at peace with one another and their neighbouring Republics; all of whom are much too busy with their own interests and too democratic in spirit to dream of aggressive war. Added to which only Uruguay and Paraguay are small enough to need ever to covet further territory. ”

“ Among both there is the same aristocratic assuredness of social position; but whereas each better-class Argentine seeks to outvie his immediate associates in luxurious outward appearance, the Uruguayan is content with a more solid if less showy all-round level of comfort. If one may use so discredited a term, the Uruguayan is the much more “eminently respectable” of the two, a man who derives his greatest pride from the fact that his word always has been and is every bit as good as his bond. ”

“ Brazil does not: Argentina has more than once already in the past refused to take Uruguay into her Federation: Paraguay, except as a constant nuisance to herself and everyone near her, is, and will be for many years to come, a negligible quantity in South American politics. The Andine frontier now fixed between Chile and Argentine is never again likely to be disturbed by either. Uruguay may possibly cast longing eyes one day at the rich grazing lands of Southern Brazil ”

“ Montevideo lay in its power; but the remainder of the Banda Oriental as well as the Argentine provinces of Entre Rios, Correntes, and Santa Fé were completely subject to Artigas. Alive to the growing power of the Protector, the Buenos Aires Government opened negotiations for a treaty, flinging out in the first place an olive-branch in the shape of a degree not only relieving the head of the Gaucho leader of the dollars set upon it, but in addition proclaiming him to the world as buen servidor de la patria—"a worthy servant of the country." ”

“ The territory of the Republic being abundant in all natural resources and elements necessary to make easy any kind of work or industry one chooses to undertake, and the immigrant getting very soon accustomed to a climate and customs very little different from those of his own country, the Oriental Republic of Uruguay offers therefore all kinds of advantages to the honest and laborious immigrant who comes here in search of a remuneration greater than that he can earn in his own country. ”

“ Long periods of Agricultural paralysis, often almost total (in a land which depends exclusively on agricultural products) , due to civil strife and all the heavy outlay consequent on such wars, have never led Uruguay to depart from the strictly gold basis of her monetary system. Her paper dollar has always retained its full face value as a token and remains the best dollar on the exchange markets of the world. And the world-wide credit of private Uruguayan firms stands high above that of similar firms in other, even the most prosperous South American Republics. ”

“ State insurance, State railways, State tramways, water and gas works, electrical power stations and, in fact, State everything was Señor Batlle’s [15] plan for holding Uruguay up to the world as a splendid object-lesson in State Socialism. Here again one sees the fire of patriotism gleaming through a mass of practical difficulties (the obtaining of necessary capital for the purpose, and on the necessary conditions of the execution of such splendid plans, for instance) in the way of the accomplishment of the President’s dream. ”

“ The progress of industry, education, science, and art by the side of the roar of strife is necessarily a silent one. Its course has been none the less forceful for all that; and universities, schools, national institutions of every kind, port-works, and the general paraphernalia of commerce testify to the fact that Uruguay has not permitted her numerous internal struggles to divert the nation from its true forward march. ”

“ To think this would be to do a cruel injustice to the national character, the leading characteristics of which are uprightness and honesty in thought or deed. No Uruguayan would ever have rebelled had he not thought that the policy of the existing Government was gravely prejudicial to the vital interests of his country, nor would an Uruguayan statesman have ever clung to power unless he had been conscientiously convinced that the policy of his party was the only true way to that country’s best development and prosperity. ”

“ It is wonderful how much money Authority has to spend on amusement when it gets a day or two’s holiday in Buenos Aires; and it is great fun as well as good policy to go round with him, if you also are in funds. Argentine Authority seldom gives or expects anything for nothing; but usually is a pleasant enough fellow withal, if taken the right way.
The Uruguayan, in such regards as in all others, is a less sophisticated and, in country districts, a more primitively minded person ”

“ But all these things, even if the future do hold them in store, are beyond the perceptibly practical horizon; while the already preponderating influence of cereal production on the destinies of Argentina is immediately evident. Argentina practically supplies the world with linseed.
Uruguay is still in the infancy of its agriculture. It has as yet but some two million acres of cultivated land as against some thirty million acres of pasturage. But the world’s demands will doubtless lead it on the same course as that imposed on the United States and Argentina ”

“ Uruguay still maintains its singular position. The nominal government is without power beyond the walls of Montevideo, the capital, which, as for the last dozen years, is held in a state of siege by General Oribe, supported by aid from Buenos Ayres.
In Bolivia Government has issued the programme of a new Constitution, based upon the following articles: "1st. The Government will defend and uphold the sovereignty and independence of the republic abroad, and peace and tranquillity at home. 2d. The Catholic religion shall be that of the State. 3d. ”

“ In regard to home politics, doubtless a good deal of intrigue is constantly at work at Government House in Buenos Aires, but those are matters which the foreign settler leaves exclusively to the Argentines themselves. So long as they do [75] nothing which may affect trade or credit, even the representatives of the largest foreign interests are careful to avoid any act or word which might savour of interference in the sole management by the Argentine of purely Argentine affairs. ”