born, and the peaceful state of the country peasants gives only one-nineteenth more male than female deaths. From the whole of these data we may conclude that in Europe as well as the equinoxial regions, who have enjoyed a long state of tranquillity, we should find an excess of males, if the sea, the wars and dangerous employments peculiar to our sex did not tend incessantly to diminish their number.

The population of the great cities is by no means stable, and does not remain in a state of equilibrium with respect to the different sexes. The country women come in to the cities to serve in houses who want slaves; and a great number of men leave them to travel through the country as muleteers (arrieros), or to fix their abode in places where there are considerable mines. Whatever be the cause of this disproportion of sexes in the cities, it is no less certain that such a disproportion exists. The following table, which includes only three cities, exhibits a striking contrast to the table which we gave of the general population of eight Mexican provinces:

ber of Spanish women who quit Europe for Mexico.

*This apparent disproportion proceeds from the small num

In the United States of North America the enumerations, which include the whole population, indicate, as in Europe and Mexico, an excess of males in life. This excess is very unequal in a country where the emigration of whites, the introduction of many male slaves, and maritime commerce, tend incessantly to disturb the order prescribed by nature. In the states of Vermont †, Kentucky, and South Carolina, there are almost one-tenth more males than females, while in Pensylvania and the state of New York this disproportion does not amount to one-eighteenth.

When the kingdom of New Spain shall enjoy an administration favourable to knowledge, political arithmetic will there furnish data of infinite importance both for statistics in general, and for the physical history of man in particular. How many problems are to resolve in a mountainous country, which exhibits under the same latitude the greatest variety of climates, inhabitants of three or four primitive races, and the mixture of these races in all the combinations imaginable! How many researches to make regarding the age of puberty, the fecundity of the species, the difference of the sexes, and the longevity which is greater or less according to the elevation and temperature of the places, according to the variety of races, accord

* Yet he has just stated, that in the French empire the fomales in life are to the males as 103 to 100! Trans.

ing to the epoch at which the colonists were transplanted into such or such a region, and, in short, according to the difference of food in provinces where the banana, the jatropha, rice, maize, wheat, and potatoes, grow together in a narrow space.

A traveller cannot give himself up to researches which require much time, the intervention of the supreme authority, and the concurrence of a great number of individuals interested in accomplishing the same end. It is sufficient here to have pointed out what remains to be done, when the government shall be disposed to profit by the happy position in which nature has placed this extraordinary country.

The operations of 1793, respecting the popula tion of the capital, offer results which are deserving of a place at the end of this chapter. The individuals in this part of the enumeration, below and above the age of fifty, were distinguished according to the difference of cast; and it was found that this epoqua was passed:

By 4128 white creoles in a total population of

Individuals of the same race.

So that there have past the age of 50:
In 100 white creoles (Spaniards)

These calculations, while they confirm the admirable uniformity which reigns in all the laws of nature, seem to indicate that longevity is somewhat greater in the races which are best fed, and in which the epoqua of puberty is later. Of 2335 Europeans who were living in Mexico in 1793, not fewer than 442 had attained the age of fifty, which by no means proves that the Americans have three times less probability of attaining an advanced age than the Europeans; for the Europeans seldom remove to America till they have come to a mature age.

After examining the physical and moral state of the different casts of which the Mexican population is composed, the reader will no doubt desire to have a discussion of what is the influence of this mixture of races on the general wellbeing of society? and what is the degree of enjoyment and individual happiness, which, in the actual state of the country, a man of cultivated mind can procure amidst such a collision of interests, prejudices, and feelings?

We will not speak here of the advantages afforded by the Spanish colonies from the wealth of their natural productions, the fertility of their soil, the facility which a man possesses there of choosing as he feels inclined, with thermometer in hand, in a space of a few square leagues, the temperature or climate which he believes the most favourable to his age, his physical constitution, or the spe