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There is consequently, in appearance, a very great mortality and a very small number of births in the capital. The conflux of patients to the city is considerable, not only of the most indigent class of the people who seek assistance in the hospitals, of which the number of beds amounts to 1100, but also of persons in easy circumstances, who are brought to Mexico because neither advice nor remedies can be procured in the country. This circumstance accounts for the great number of deaths on the parish registers. On the other hand, the convents, the celibacy of the secular clergy, the progress of luxury, the militia, and the indigence of the Saragates Indians, who live like the Lazaroni of Naples in idleness, are the principal causes which influence the disadvantageous relation of the births to the population.

MM. Alzate and Clavigero †, from a com

* From this mode of expression one would be led to imagine that the regular clergy did not live in celibacy. What they may contribute to the population more than the secular clergy will not be easy to ascertain, but their title is presumed to be precisely the same. Trans.

The Abbé Clavigero falls into an error when he says "that an enumeration gave more than 200,OCO souls to the city of Mexico." He says, however, very truly, that the births and deaths of Mexico generally amount to a fourth more than those of Madrid. In fact, in 1788 the number of births at Madrid was 4897, and the deaths 5915; and in 1797 there were 4141 deaths and 4911 births. (Alexandre de Laborde, ii. p. 102).

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parison of the parish registers of Mexico with those of several European cities, have endeavoured to prove that the capital of New Spain' must contain more than 200,000 inhabitants; but how can we suppose in the enumeration of 1790 an error of 87,000 souls, more than twofifths of the whole population? Besides, the comparisons of these two learned Mexicans can from their nature lead to no certain results, because the cities of which they exhibit the bills of mortality are situated in very different elevations and climates, and because the state of civilization and comfort of the great mass of their inhabitants afford the most striking contrasts. Madrid the births are one in 34, and at Berlin one in 28. The one of these proportions can no more, however, than the other be applicable to calculations regarding the population of the cities of equinoxial America. Yet the difference between these proportions is so great, that it would alone, on an annual number of 6000 births, augment or diminish to the extent of 36,000 souls, the population of the city of Mexico. The number of deaths or births is, perhaps, the best of all means for determining the number of the inhabitants of a district, when the numbers which express the relations of the births and deaths to the whole population in a given country have been carefully ascertained; but these numbers, the result of a long induction, can

never be applied to countries whose physical and moral situation are totally different. They denote the medium state of prosperity of a mass of population, of which the greatest part dwell in the country; and we cannot, therefore, avail ourselves of these proportions to ascertain the number of inhabitants of a capital.

Mexico is the most populous city of the new continent. It contains nearly 40,000 inhabitants fewer than Madrid*; and as it forms a great square of which each side is nearly 2750 metres †, its population is spread over a great extent of ground. The streets being very spacious, they in general appear rather deserted. They are so much the more so, as in a climate considered as cold by the inhabitants of the tropics, people expose themselves less to the free air than in the cities at the foot of the Cordillera. Hence the latter (ciudades de tierra caliente) appear uniformly more populous than the cities of the temperate or cold regions (ciudades de tierra fria). If Mexico contains more inhabitants than any of the cities of Great Britain and

The population of Madrid (says M. de Laborde), is "156,272 inhabitants. However, with the garrison, strangers, and Spaniards who flock in from the provinces, the population may be carried to 200,000 souls." The greatest length of Mexico is nearly 3900 metres (12,794 English feet); of Paris 8000 metres (26,246 English feet).

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France, with the exception of London, Dublin, and Paris; on the other hand, its population is much less than that of the great cities of the Levant and East Indies.-Calcutta, Surat, Madras, Aleppo, and Damascus, contain all of them from two to four and even six hundred thousand inhabitants.

The Count de Revillagigedo set on foot accurate researches into the consumption of Mexico. The following table, drawn up in 1791, may be interesting to those who have a knowledge of the important operations of MM. Lavoisier and Arnould, relative to the consumption of Paris and all France.

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Supposing, with M. Peuchet, the population of Paris to be four times greater than that of Mexico, we shall find that the consumption of beef is nearly proportional to the number of inhabitants of the two cities, but that that of mutton and pork is infinitely more at Mexico. The dif ference is as follows:

* Flour is not certainly a liquid; but it is probably classed among the liquids, as being sold by liquid measure. Trans.

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