ministration may re-establish harmony, calm their passions and resentments, and yet preserve for a long time the union among the members of one and the same great family scattered over Europe and America, from the Patagonian coast to the north of California.

The number of individuals of whom the white race is composed (Casta de los blancos o de los Españoles) amounts, probably, in all New Spain to 1,200,000, of whom nearly the fourth part in. habited the provincias internas. In New Biscay, or in the intendancy of Durango, there is hardly an individual subject to the tributo. Almost all the inhabitants of these northern regions pretend to be of pure European extraction.

In the year 1793 they reckoned:

In the intendancy of Gua

naxuato on a total po- Souls. Spaniards, pulation of

398,000
290,000 80,000

103,000

Such is the simple result of the enumeration, making none of the changes requisite from the imperfection of that operation which we discussed in the fifth chapter. Consequently, in the four intendancies adjoining the capital, we find 272,000 whites, either Europeans or descendants of Europeans, in a total population of 1,737,000 souls. For every hundred inhabitants, there were:

These considerable differences show the degree of civilization to which the ancient Mexicans had attained south from the capital. These southern regions were always the best inhabited. In the north, as we have already several times observed in the course of this work, the Indian population was more thinly sown. Agriculture has only begun to make any progress there since the period of the conquest.

It is curious to compare together the number of whites in the West Indies and in Mexico. The French part of St. Domingo contained in its happiest æra, 1788, on a surface of 1700 square leagues (25 to the degree) a smaller population than that of the intendancy of la Puebla. Page* estimates the population of St. Domingo at 520,000 inhabitants, among whom there were 40,000 whites, 28,000 people of colour, and 452,000

* Vol. ii. p. 5. In 1802 there were in the whole island of St. Domingo only 375,000 inhabitants, whereof 290,000 were labourers, 47,000 domestics, artisans, and sailors, and 37,000 soldiers. To what a degree must the population have diminished within the last six years! In the island of Barbadoes, the number of whites is greater than in any of the other islands; it amounts to 16,000, on a total population of 80,000.

slaves. Hence, in St. Domingo, in every 100 souls, eight were white, six free people of colour, and eighty-six African slaves. Jamaica was computed in 1787 to have in every 100 inhabitants, ten whites, four people of colour, and eighty-six slaves; and yet this English colony possesses a smaller population by one-third than the intendancy of Oaxaca. Hence, the disproportion-between the Europeans or their descendants, and the casts of Indian or African blood, is still greater in the southern part of New Spain than in the French and English sugar islands. The island of Cuba, on the contrary, exhibits even at this day in the distribution of the races a very great and a very consolatory difference. From the most careful statistical researches which I was enabled to make during my stay at the Havannah, in 1800 and 1804, I found that at the last of these epochs the total population of the island of Cuba amounted to 432,000 souls, among whom there were

or

in every 100 inhabitants, fifty-four Creole and European whites, twenty-one men of colour, and

twenty-five slaves. The proportion of freemen to slaves is there as three to one, while in Jamaica they are as one to six.

The following table exhibits the proportion of the other casts to the whites in the different parts of the new continent. Out of every 100 inhabitants, we reckon

In the United States of North.

America

Island of Cuba.

Kingdom of New Spain (without

54

including the provincias internas) 16

Kingdom of Peru

Island of Jamaica

12

10

In the capital of Mexico, according to the enumeration of the Count de Revillagigedo, in every 100 inhabitants, forty-nine are Spanish! Creoles, two Spaniards born in Europe, twentyfour Aztec and Otomite Indians, and twentyfive people of mixed blood. The exact knowledge of these proportions is of the utmost importance to those who have the superintendence of the colonies.

It would be difficult to estimate exactly how many Europeans there are among the 1,200,000 whites who inhabit New Spain. As in the capital of Mexico itself, where the government brings together the greatest number of Spaniards, in a population of more than 135,000 souls, not more than 2500 individuals are born in Europe,

it is more than probable that the whole kingdom does not contain more than 70 or 80,000. Theys. 'constitute, therefore, only the 70th part of the whole population, and the proportion of Europeans to white Creoles is as one to fourteen.

The Spanish laws prohibit all entry into the American possessions to every European not born in the peninsula. The words European and Spaniard are become synonimous in Mexico and Peru. The inhabitants of the remote provinces have therefore a difficulty in conceiving that there can be Europeans who do not speak their language; and they consider this ignorance as a mark of low extraction, because, every where around them, all, except the very lowest class of the people, speak Spanish. Better acquainted with the history of the sixteenth cen tury than with that of our own times, they imagine That Spain continues to possess a decided preponderance over the rest of Europe. To them the peninsula appears the very centre of European civilization. It is otherwise with the Americans of the capital. Those of them who are acquainted with the French or English literature fall easily into a contrary extreme; and have still a more unfavourable opinion of the mother country than the French had at a time when communication was less frequent between Spain and the rest of Europe. They prefer strangers from other countries to the Spaniards; and they flatter