COMMERCE. 



123 



forty-four thousand two hundred and twenty-two. In all the 

 other districts there was a proportionate diminution. 



This immense vacuity is not to be ascribed to the Spanish 

 possessions alone : it appears to be the destiny of all unculti- 

 vated and savage nations, to be extinguished by a proximity 

 to, and communication with, those that are civilized and en- 

 lightened. The five powerful nations of Canada, which, in 

 1530, brought fifteen thousand warriors into the field, could 

 not, at the present time, assemble three thousand. In 1730, 

 thirty thousand natives resided on the western coast of Green- 

 land : the numbers were reduced, in 1746, to nineteen thou- 

 sand ; and in 1770, did not amount to seven thousand. 



To repair, in the Americas, this very mischievous deficien- 

 cy, recourse was had to the introdu6bion of negroes at a very 

 early date after the discovery. If it were to our purpose to 

 dwell on the totality of the supplies drawn from Africa, and 

 which, on a fair estimate, may amount annually to forty 

 thousand, we should find, that since the year 1517, the epoch 

 of the first importation, to that of 1790, nearly eleven mil- 

 lions of these unfortunate creatures have been transplanted 

 from their native soil. But, setting aside those required by 

 other nations for their establishments, the annual importation 

 into the viceroy alty of Lima may be regulated at five hundred, 

 that number coming the nearest to the computation of the 

 ninth article of the assiento treaty. 



The Africans thus imported are, however, so many indivi- 

 duals lost to the growth of the population. The radical de- 

 fe6l of the climate, which, in the new world, according to 

 the opinion of several celebrated naturalists, resists the multi- 

 plication of the human species, is sensibly evinced in the ne- 



R 2 p-roes, 



9 



