In Mexico, Guatimala, Quito, And Peru, On The Contrary, There Exist In Our Day More Than Five Millions And A

Half of natives of copper-coloured race, whose isolated position, partly forced and partly voluntary, together with their attachment to

Ancient habits, and their mistrustful inflexibility of character, will long prevent their participation in the progress of the public prosperity, notwithstanding the efforts employed to disindianize them.

I dwell on the differences between the free states of temperate and equinoctial America, to show that the latter have to contend against obstacles connected with their physical and moral position; and to remind the reader that the countries embellished with the most varied and precious productions of nature, are not always susceptible of an easy, rapid, and uniformly extended cultivation. If we consider the limits which the population may attain as depending solely on the quantity of subsistence which the land is capable of producing, the most simple calculations would prove the preponderance of the communities established in the fine regions of the torrid zone; but political economy, or the positive science of government, is distrustful of ciphers and vain abstractions. We know that by the multiplication of one family only, a continent previously desert may reckon in the space of eight centuries more than eight millions of inhabitants; and yet these estimates, founded on the hypothesis of a continuous doubling in twenty-five or thirty years, are contradicted by the history of every country already advanced in civilization. The destinies which await the free states of Spanish America are too glorious to require to be embellished by illusions and chimerical calculations.

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