AVERAGE POPULATION. 123 



The necessity of labour, the preference given to the cultiva- 

 tion of the sugar-cane, indigo, and cotton, the cupidity which, 

 often accompanies and degrades industry, gave birth to that 

 infamous slave-trade, the consequences of which have beer 

 alike fatal to the old and the new world. Happily, in the 

 continental part of Spanish America, the number of African 

 s is so inconsiderable, that, compared with the slave 

 population of Brazil, or with that of the southern part of the 

 United States, it is found to be in the proportion of one to 

 fourteen. The whole of the Spanish colonies, without 

 excluding the islands of Cuba and Porto Bico, have not, 

 over a surface which exceeds at least by one-fifth that of 

 Europe, as many negroes as the single state of Virginia. 

 The Spanish Americans, in the union of New Spain and 

 Guatimala, present an example, unique in the torrid zone, viz., 

 a nation of eight millions of inhahitants governed conform- 

 ably with European institutions and laws, cultivating sugar, 

 cacao, wheat, and grapes, and having scarcely a slave brought 

 from Africa. 



The population of the New Continent as yet surpasses but 

 little that of France or Germany. It doubles in the United 

 States in twenty-three or twenty-five years ; and at Mexico, 

 even under the government of the mother country, it doubles 

 in forty or forty-five years. Without indulging too flatter- 

 ing hopes of the future, it may be admitted, that in less 

 than a century and a half the population of America will 

 equal that of Europe. This noble rivalry in civilization, 

 and the arts of industry and commerce, far from impo- 

 verishing the old continent, as has often been supposed it 

 might at the expense of the new one, will augment the 

 wants of the consumer, the mass of productive labour, and 

 rtivitv of exchange. Doubtless, in consequence of the 

 .i revolutions which human society undergoes, the public 

 me, the common patrimony of civilization, is found dif- 

 ily divided among the nations of the old and the new 

 1 : but by degrees the equilibrium is restored ; and it is 

 tl, I had almost said an impious prejudice, to consider 

 .: rowing prosperity of any other part of our planet as a 

 ;.ity to Europe. The independence of the colonies will 

 nor contribute to isolate them from the old civilized nations,but 

 will rather bring all more closely together. Commerce tends 



