234 piioroRTioNS OF SLAVE POPULATION. 



common wreck. That island contains 455,000 free men and 

 160,000 slaves : and there, by prudent and humane mea- 

 sures, the gradual abolition of slavery might be brought 

 about. Let us not forget, that since San Domingo has become 

 free, there are in the whole archipelago of the West Indies, 

 more free negroes and mulattos than slaves. The whites, 

 and above all, the free men, whose cause it would be easy to 

 link with that of the whites, take a very rapid numerical 

 increase at Cuba. The slaves would have diminished, since 

 1820, with great rapidity, but for the fraudulent contin- 

 uation of the slave-trade. If, by the progress of human 

 civilization, and the firm resolution of the new states of free 

 America, this infamous traffic should cease altogether, the 

 diminution of the slave population would become more con- 

 siderable for some time, on account of the disproportion 

 existing between the two sexes, and the continuance of 

 emancipation. It would cease only when the relation be- 

 tween the deaths and births of slaves should be such that 

 even the effects of enfranchisement would be counterbalanced. 

 The whites and free men now form two-thirds of the whole 

 population of the island, and this increase marks in some 

 degree the diminution of the slaves. Among the latter, the 

 women are to the men (exclusive of the mulatto slaves), 

 scarcely in the proportion of 1:4, in the sugar-cane plan- 

 tations ; in the whole island, as 1 : 1'7 ; and in the towns 

 and farms where the negro slaves serve as domestics, or 

 work by the day on their own account as well as that of 

 their masters, the proportion is as 1 : 1*4 ; even (for instance 

 at the Havannah),* as 1 : 1'2. The developments that 

 follow, will show that these proportions are founded on nume- 

 rical statements, which may be regarded as the limit-numbers 

 i of the maximum. 



The prognostics which are hazarded respecting the dimi- 

 nution of the total population of the island, at the period 



* It appears probable that at the end of 1825, of the total population 

 of men of colour (mulattos and negroes, free and slaves), there were 

 nearly 160,000 in the towns, and 230,000 in the fields. In 1811. the 

 Consulado, in a statement presented to the Cortes of Spain, computed at 

 141,000, thenumber of men of colour in the towns, and 185,000 in the 

 fields. (Doc'inientos sobre los Neyros, p. 121.) This great accumulation 

 of mulattos, free negros, and slaves, in the towns, is a characteristic feature 

 in the island of Cuba. 



