132 
COSirAKISON BETWEEW 
On comparing the extent of tho territory with the ab- 
solute population, we obtain the result of ithe coimection 
of those two elements of public prosperity, a connection 
that constitutes the relative population of every state in 
the New World. We shall find to every square sea league, 
in Mexico, 90 ; in the United States, 58 ; in the republic 
of Columbia, 30 ; and in Brazil, 15 inhabitants ; while 
Asiatic Eussia furnishes 11 ; the whole Eussian Empire, 
87 ; Sweden with Norway, 90 ; European Eussia, 320 ; 
Spain, 7G3; and Prance, 1778. But these estimates of 
relative population, when applied to countries of immense 
extent, and of which a great part is entirely uninhabited, 
merely furnish mathematical abstractions of but little value. 
In countries uniformly cultivated — in Prance, for example — 
the number ot inhabitauts to the square league, calculated' 
by separate departments, is in general only a third, more 
or less, than the relative population of the sum of all 
the departments. Even in Spain, the deviations from tho 
average number rise, with few exceptions, only from half 
to double. In America, .on the contrary, it is only in the 
Atlantic states, from South Carolina to New Hampshire, 
that the population begins to spread with any uniformity. 
In that most civilized portion of the New World, from 130 
to 900 inhabitants arc rechoned to the square league, while 
the relative population on all the Atlantic states, considered 
together, is 240. The extremes (North Carolina and Mas- 
sachussets) are only in the relation of 1 to 7, nearly as in 
Prance, where the " extremes, in the departments of the 
Hautes Alpes and the C6te-du-Nord are also in the relation 
of 1 to G-7. The variations from the average number, which 
we generally find restricted to narrow limits in the civilized 
countries of Europe, exceed all measure in Brazil, in the 
Spanish colonies, and even in tho confederation of the 
United States, in its whole extent. We find in Mexico, 
in some of the intendencias, for example. La Sonora and 
Durango, from 9 to 15 inhabitants to the square leagxic, 
while in others, on the central table-laud, there are more 
than 500. The relative population of the country situated 
between the eastern bank of the Mississippi and the Atlantic 
states, is scarcely 47 ; while that of Connecticut, Ehode 
Island, «id Massachpssets, is more than 800. Westward 
