ic insurrections occurred. They were called "revolutions," not
because some great principle was actually at stake but because the term
had been popular ever since the struggle with Spain. As a designation
for movements aimed at securing rotation in office, and hence control of
the treasury, it was appropriate enough! At all events, whether serious
or farcical, the commotions often involved an expenditure in life and
money far beyond the value of the interests affected. Further, both
the prevalent disorder and the centralization of authority impelled the
educated and well-to-do classes to take up their residence at the seat
of government. Not a few of the uprisings were, in fact, protests on
the part of the neglected folk in the interior of the country against
concentration of population, wealth, intellect, and power in the Spanish
American capitals.

Among the towns of this sort was Buenos Aires. Here, in 1829, Rosas
inaugurated a career of rulership over the Argentine Confederation,
culminating in a despotism that made him the most extraordinary figure
of his time. Originally a stockfarmer and skilled in all the exercises
of the cowboy, he developed an unusual talent for administration. His
keen intelligence, supple statecraft, inflexibility of purpose, and
vigor of action, united to a shrewd understanding of human follies and
passions, gave to his personality a dominance that awed and to his word
of command a power that humbled. Over his fellow chieftains who held the
provinces in terrorized subjection, he won an ascendancy that insured
compliance with his will. The instincts of the multitude he flattered
by his generous simplicity, while he enlisted the support of the
responsible class by maintaining order in the countryside. The desire,
also, of Buenos Aires to be paramount over the other provinces had no
small share in strengthening his power.

Relatively honest in money matters, and a stickler for precision and
uniformity, Rosas sought to govern a nation in the rough-and-ready
fashion of the stock farm. A creature of his environment, no better
and no worse than his associates, but only more capable than they,
and absolutely convinced that pitiless autocracy was the sole means of
creating a nation out of chaotic fragments, this "Robespierre of
South America" carried on his despotic sway, regardless of the fury of
opponents and the menace of foreign intervention.

During the first three years of his control, howev