Alegre, have been in recent years, or are now being, fitted with fine docks and all the other requisites for first-rate ports. In a country of such extent the twelve thousand miles of railroad already built, and the two thousand under construction, still leave the whole of the far interior practically unprovided with facilities for land-transport. Fortunately there is no part of the earth's surface so lavishly provided with magnificent navigable rivers, penetrating to every part of the land. The Amazon and its great tributaries form a network of waterways unique in the world, since ocean-going liners can make their way up the main stream to Iquitos, more than 3000 miles inland, while for steamers of a lighter draught it is probably far within the mark to say that navigation on the Amazonian system is possible for ten times that distance within the borders of Brazil. Nor is this all. There are many other fine rivers south of the Amazon, notably the Tocantins and the San Francisco, which are important avenues of communication; and access to the La Plata is afforded by the Paraguay and the Parana from the southern parts of the great inland provinces of Matto Grosso and Goyaz.

Before the expansion of the rubber industry and the creation by British capital and enterprise of the port of Manáos, at the point of junction of the Upper Amazon with its great affluent, the Rio Negro, some forty or fifty years ago, it is not too much to say that the number of civilised settlements in equatorial Amazonia was far smaller than it was a century earlier. Even at this day the Rio Negro, a river second only in volume to the Upper Amazon itself, with innumerable tributaries, by one of which there is communication with the Upper Orinoco, passes through large districts still unoccupied and practically unknown. The southern part of Amazonia, including the valuable territory of Acre, acquired in 1903 by agreement with Bolivia, contains vast tropical forests in which rubber-producing trees are indigenous. The rubber industry is for Brazil, what the nitrate fields are for Chile, one of the main sources of revenue of the State; and there is every prospect that, with the increasing demand of the world for rubber, this branch of commerce will go on rapidly expanding.

The area of Brazil bespeaks a great variety of climate; Vol. 213.-No. 425.

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and almost every province, as one proceeds southward from the mouth of the Amazon, differs in the character of its produce. Tobacco and cotton are flourishing and improving industries. That of sugar, at one time more important than either, is now on the decline, for the sugar produced from cane, here as in the West Indies, is unable to obtain remunerative prices in the face of the large consumption of beet-sugar. It is chiefly grown now for the home market. Coffee is, however, the great commodity, for the supply of which even more than for rubber, Brazil holds the first place in the world's markets. The three principal coffee-growing States are São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Minas Geraes; but there are many other districts where it is grown. More than three-quarters of the whole world's supply of coffee is furnished by Brazil; but over-production has brought about a fall in prices, and already the area under cultivation is being diminished. The chief port for the exportation of coffee is Santos, which is one of the finest harbours in the country, and the avenue through which many thousands of immigrants are year by year making their way to the coffee plantations of São Paulo or the great cattle-raising prairies of Rio Grande do Sul.

It is in this southern part of the country that the climatic conditions are most favourable for European settlement; and the number of Italians and Germans who have made a home there is large and growing larger. In his work, 'Through Five Republics,' Mr Percy F. Martin estimates the population of Brazil in 1905 as about 15,000,000. Since that date there has been a large immigration; but in the absence of any scientific census, all estimates are problematical. What is certain is that in the city of São Paulo, containing 300,000 inhabitants, more than half are Italians and Germans; and that the State of Santa Catarina in Rio Grande do Sul has practically become a German colony. The large bodies of Italians who settle in Brazil are speedily absorbed, and become, in the course of a few years, Portuguese in language and manners. The Germans, however, in the agricultural and pastoral districts of the temperate south, retain their national tongue and characteristics and form a Teutonic enclave in the midst of Latin surroundings.

The control of the executive in Brazil, since the aboli

tion of the monarchy, has remained, as in the Spanish republics, in the hands of a small governing caste, the bulk of the population being apathetic, and the elections to a large extent a mere form. How long such a state of things will last, in the face of the growing number of foreign immigrants pouring into the country, it is difficult to say. Much will depend upon the character of the administration. At present the condition of Brazil is one of steady progress and development. The statesmen in possession of power are capable and intelligent, and its financial credit is satisfactory. But the holding together of so vast an empire, with its scattered population made up of such diverse elements, and the opening of the great inland districts, with their vast natural resources and stores of mineral wealth, to commerce and to settlement, is, and will be, no light task. Should it be successfully accomplished, Brazil cannot fail one day to take its place among the great Powers of the world.

In Brazil, as in Argentina, Chile, Peru and Uruguay, the investments of British capital in railways, public works, banks and other enterprises are enormous; and a very considerable portion of the entire trade of the country is in British hands. South America is, speaking generally, not to be recommended to the British agricultural emigrant, unless he possesses capital; and even then, if he followed good advice, it would be far better for him to make his new home in some land beneath the British flag. To him the surroundings of life in one of the Latin republics of South America are uncongenial and alien. The distinctive stamp of Iberian civilisation is indelibly imprinted on the southern continent of America; and it is here that the emigrant from the shores of the Mediterranean finds his most suitable abiding-place, where he can settle and quickly make himself at home. But British influence and British trade, despite the strenuous efforts of rivals, are still paramount in South America. It has not been forgotten that it was in no small degree by the help of British sympathy and British volunteers that the independence of the South American republics a century ago was won. What is perhaps even more important, it was under the ægis of the all-powerful British navy that independence was maintained in the days when it was threatened by

the combined forces of the Holy Alliance; for it was no secret that the Monroe doctrine, for many years after it was first put forward, really meant that a European aggressor would find his way to the shores of the American continent barred by the British fleet. Everywhere in South America the Englishman is trusted and is welcomed; and, if in the future he finds himself ousted from the predominant position he has hitherto held in South American trade, it will be through his own fault.

The nearness of the United States of America ensures to the great republic of the north a large share of the trade with Mexico, and to a less degree with the other countries of Latin America. Nevertheless, it is a remarkable fact that very few citizens of the United States are to be found south of the isthmus of Panama. The South American republics have from time to time shown a readiness to shelter themselves, in their difficulties with European creditors, behind the Monroe doctrine; and eloquent orations filled with expressions of brotherhood and friendliness have marked the opening and the close of Pan-American Congresses. But at bottom there is no love lost between the Latin republics and the United States. The ideals of the North and South are not merely dissimilar, but antagonistic. The hegemony implied by the Monroe doctrine, even if not openly asserted, is, as we have already pointed out, resented in South America. Many things are possible in that vast and varied quarter of the world; and the present century will undoubtedly witness there a process of growth and evolution the precise form of which cannot be at present with clearness foreseen; but it may be predicted with certainty that Latin America will never without an obstinate struggle consent to become in any sense a political appendage of the United States.

Art. 8.-COPYRIGHT LAW REFORM.

1. A Bill to Amend and Consolidate the Law relating to Copyright. London: Wyman, 1910.

2. Memorandum of the Proceedings at the Imperial Copyright Conference, 1910. London: Wyman, 1910.

3. Report of the Committee on the Law of Copyright. London: Wyman, 1909; and Minutes of Evidence, with Appendix. London: Wyman, 1910.

4. Correspondence respecting the Revised Convention of Berne for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. London: Wyman, 1909.

*

THE introduction by the President of the Board of Trade of a Bill to amend and codify the law relating to copyright is the latest of a series of important events to which the general public has given little heed. The Berne Copyright Convention (1887), to which almost all the leading countries of the world, except the United States, are parties, was revised at an International Conference held at Berlin, under the auspices of the German Government, in October and November 1908. The revised Convention was exhaustively examined in 1909 from the point of view of the United Kingdom by a strong Departmental Committee, of which Lord Gorell was Chairman. Finally, the methods of securing the co-operation of the whole Empire, in a renewed effort to reform the Copyright Law, were discussed, with the revised Convention as a text, at a conference with representatives of the self-governing Dominions and India, under the presidency of Mr Sydney Buxton, in May and June of the present year. These preliminary investigations have made incontestable the urgent necessity of reforming the British Copyright Law for at least three separate reasons: first, on account of its inherent defects; secondly, in order to place the copyright legislation of the Empire on a stable foundation; and thirdly, for the sake of enabling the revised Convention to be ratified, in accordance with the emphatic recommendation both of

The members of the Convention are now: Belgium, the British Empire, Denmark, France, Germany, Hayti, Italy, Japan, Liberia, Luxemburg, Monaco, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Tunis. There is reason to hope that Holland will soon join the Convention.