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lions and a half of marcs of silver*, while in the whole of the European states, including Asiatic Russia, the total annual produce of the mines scarcely exceeds† the sum of three hundred thousand mares. A long stay in Spanish America enabled me to procure more exact information with respect to the metallic wealth of Mexico, Peru, New Grenada, and the viceroyalty of Buenos Ayres, than is to be found in the works of Adam Smith, Robertson, or Raynal. From thence I might naturally have entered into an investigation of the accumulation of the precious metals in the south and south-east of Asia; but a problem so important as this may constitute the subject of a particular memoir. I have thought proper to exhibit here the principal results of my researches, in a small map sketched at sea in 1804, on my passage from Philadelphia to France. This map indicates the flux and reflux of the precious metals. We observe in general that they move from west to east; a motion the reverse of that of the ocean, atmosphere, and the civilization of our species!

* 2,370,046 Troy pounds. Trans.

+ See, as to the mines of Europe, the excellent statistical table of the produce of mines, annexed to the Memoire general sur les Mines, par M. Heron de Villefosse, p. 240. (Paris 1809, chez Fr. Schoell.)

203,130 pounds Troy. Trans.

XIII, FIGURES REPRESENTING THE SURFACE OF NEW SPAIN, AND OF ITS INTENDANCIES, THE PROGRESS OF MINING, AND OTHER OBJECTS RELATIVE TO THE EUROPEAN COLONIES IN THE TWO INDIES.

The collected figures in this plate serve to explain what is afterwards said on the extraordi nary disproportion between the extent of the colonies and the surface (area) of the European mother countries. The inequality of the territorial division of New Spain has been rendered sensible in representing the intendancies by squares inscribed above one another. This graphical method is analogous to what M. Playfair first employed, in a very ingenious manner, in his commercial and political atlas, and in his statistical maps of Europe. Without attaching much importance to these sketches, I cannot regard them as mere trifles foreign to science. It is true the map which M. Playfair giyes of the national debt of England brings to mind the section of the Pic of Teneriffe; but natural philosophers have long indicated by similar figures the state of the barometer and mean temperature of months. It would be ridiculous to endeavour to express by curves moral ideas, the prosperity of nations, or decay of their

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Chap. i. and chap. viii.

literature; but whatever relates to extent and quantity may be represented by geometrical figures; and statistical projections which speak to the senses without fatiguing the mind, possess the advantage of fixing the attention on a great number of important facts.

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TABLE

Of the geographical positions of the kingdom of New Spain, determined by astronomical observations. (The positions, marked with an asterisk, are established either by triangulations, or angles of altitude and azimuths.)

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Salamanca, (city)

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