"26i KiOGEESS OF LUXUET. 



duction of 6000 barrels of brandy from Spain and Holland, 

 and 113,000 barrels (1,864,000 piastres) of flour. These 

 wines, liquors, and flour, are consumed by the opulent 

 part of the nation. The cereals of the United States have 

 become articles of absolute necessity, in a zone where 

 maize, manioc, and bananas, were long preferred to every 

 other amylaceous food. The development of a luxury alto- 

 gether European, cannot be complained of amidst the 

 prosperity and increasing civilization of the Havannah ; but, 

 along with the introduction of the flour, wine, and spirituous 

 liquors of Europe, we find, in the year 1816, 1 millions of 

 piastres ; and, in the year 1823, 3 millions for salt meat, 

 rice, and dried vegetables. In the last mentioned year, 

 the importation of rice was 323,000 arrobas ; and the im- 

 portation of dried and salt meat (tasajo), for the slaves, 

 465,000 arrobas. 



The scarcity of necessary articles of subsistence charac- 

 terizes a part of the tropical climates, where the imprudent 

 activity of Europeans has inverted the order of nature : it 

 will diminish in proportion as the inhabitants, more en- 

 lightened respecting their true interests, and discouraged 

 by the low price of colonial produce, will vary the culti- 

 vation, and give free scope to all the branches of rural 

 economy. The principles of that narrow policy which guides 

 the government of very small islands, inhabited by men 

 who desert the soil whenever they are sufficiently enriched, 

 cannot be applicable to a country of an extent nearly equal 

 to that of England, covered with populous cities, and where 

 the inhabitants, established from father to son during ages, 

 far from regarding themselves as strangers to the American 

 soil, cherish it as their own country. The population of the 

 island of Cuba, which in fifty years will perhaps exceed a 

 million, may open by its own consumption an immense field 

 to native industry. If the slave-trade should cease altogether, 

 the slaves will pass by degrees into the class of free men ; 

 and society, being reconstructed, without suffering any of the 

 violent convulsions of civil dissension, will follow the path 

 which nature has traced for all societies that become nume- 

 rous and enlightened. The cultivation of the sugar-cans 

 and of coffee will not be abandoned ; but it will no longer 

 remain the principal basis of national existence than the 



