POPULATION- 189 



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ing of cattle, are founded upon arguments which do 

 not seem to me sufficiently conclusive. 



They do not take into consideration the fact, that 

 but one-sixth of the total number of slaves are on 

 the sugar plantations, many of which are not suf- 

 ficiently stocked with hands, and consequently 

 debilitate their slaves by frequent night-labor, while 

 the problem of the jpro rata increase of the total 

 population of Cuba, when the importation of negroes 

 from Africa shall have ceased entirely, is based upon 

 elements so complicated, upon such various com- 

 pensations of effect upon the white, free-colored, 

 and slave rural population on the sugar, coffee, and 

 tobacco plantations ; the slaves on the grazing farms, 

 and those who are servants, laborers, and mechanics, 

 in the cities, that we should not anticipate such 

 mournful presages, but wait until positive statistical 

 data have been obtained. 



The spirit in which the censuses have been taken, 

 even the oldest, that of 1775, for example, marking 

 the distinctions of age, sex, race, and state of civil 

 liberty, is worthy of the highest praise* The means 

 of execution only have been wanting, for the 

 government has recognized how important it is for 

 the tranquillity of the inhabitants to know minutely 

 the occupation of the negroes, their numerical dis- 

 tribution in the sugar estates, farms, and cities. To 



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