coat. But let us judge by San Juan the fate of the cities which have escaped destruction, but in which barbarism is insensibly increasing.
San Juan is an exclusively agricultural and commercial province. Its want of open country has long kept it free from the rule of the provincial chieftains. Whatever party was in power, its governor and officials were taken from the educated part of its population until 1833, when Facundo Quiroga placed a man of the lower class in possession of the government. This person, unable to avoid the influence of the civilized usages, went over to the party of culture and yielded to their dictations, until he was overthrown by Brizuela, chief of La Rioja. Brizuela was succeeded by General Benavides, whose power has lasted nine years, and has come to seem rather his own property than a magistracy held for a term. San Juan has grown in population,—owing to the progress of agriculture there, and to the emigrants driven by hunger and wretchedness from La Rioja and San Luis,—and its buildings have sensibly increased in number; facts which prove the natural wealth of the region, and the progress that might be made under a government which cared to foster education and culture, the sole methods of elevating a nation.
The despotism of Benavides is mild and pacific, so that men's minds are kept quiet and calm. He is the only subordinate of Rosas who has not reveled in blood; but this does not lessen the tendency to barbarism inherent in the present system.
All the courts are held by men destitute of the slightest knowledge of law, worthless in every sense. There
