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POLITICAL ESSAY

ON THE

KINGDOM OF NEW SPAIN.

Í ARRIVED at Mexico by the South Sea in March 1803, and resided a year in that vast kingdom. I had recently visited the province of Caraccas, the banks of the Oronooko, the Rio Negro, New Granada, Quito, and the coast of Peru; and I could not avoid being struck with the contrast between the civilization of New Spain, and the scanty cultivation of those parts of South America which had fallen under my notice. This contrast excited me to a particular study of the statisticks of Mexico, and to an investigation of the causes -which have had the greatest influence on the pro'gress of the population and national industry.

My situation offered me every means for attaining this end. No printed work could furnish me

with materials, but I had at command a great number of manuscript memoirs, of which an active curiosity had spread copies through the most remote parts of the Spanish colonies. I compared the results of my own researches with those contained in the official papers which I had many years been collecting. A short, but interesting stay, which I made in 1804 at Philadelphia and Washington, enabled me also to draw comparisons between the actual state of the United States and that of Peru and Mexico.

Thus my geographical and statistical materials swelled to too great a bulk to admit of entering their results in the historical account of my travels. I flattered myself with the hope that a particular work, under the title of Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, might be received with interest at a time when the new continent more than ever attracts the attention of Europeans. Several copies of the first sketch of this work, which I drew up in Spanish, exist in Mexico, and in the peninsula. Believing that it might be useful to those called to the administration of the colonies, who often, after a long residence, have no precise idea of the state of those beautiful and extensive regions, I communicated my manuscript to all who desired to study it. From these reiterated communications I received many important corrections.

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