STATISTICAL ESTIMATES. 
235 
^^len the slave-trade shall be really abolished, and not 
I^erely according to tlie laMS, as since 1820, respecting the 
Impossibility of continuing the cidtivation of sugar on a 
large scale, and respecting the approaching time when the 
agricultural industry of Cuba shall bo restrained to plan- 
tations of coffee and tobacco, and the breeding of cattle, are 
tounded on arguments wdiich do not appear to me to be per- 
t®ctly just. Instead of indulging in gloomy presages, the 
planters would do well to wait till the government shall have 
procured positive statistical statements. The spirit in which 
rveii very old enumerations were made, for instance that of 
177 . 5 , by the distinction of age, sex, race, and state of civil 
liberty, deserves high commendation. Nothing but the 
’poans of execution were wanting. It was felt that the inha- 
bitants were powerfully interested in knowing partially the 
occupations of the blach s, and their numerical distribution in 
Ibe sugar-settlements, farms, and towns. To I'cmedy evil, 
avoid public danger, to console the misfortunes of a suf- 
fering race, who are feared more than is acknowledged, the 
" ound must be probed ; for in the social body, when go- 
verned by intelligence, there is found, as in organic bodies, a 
repairing force, which may be opposed to the most inve- 
terate evils. 
In the year 1811 tho municipality and the Tribunal of 
Ilommerce* of the llavannah computed the total population 
cf the island ofCuba to be 600,000, including 326,000 people 
colour, free or slaves, mulattos or blacks. At that time, 
pearly three-fifths of the people of colour resided in the 
jurisdiction of the llavannah, from Cape Saint Antonio to 
Alvarez. In this part it appears that the towns contained 
Us many mulattos and free negroes as slaves, but that the 
colom.Qj[ population of the towns was to that of the fields as 
l^"o to three. In the eastern part of the island, on the 
contrary, from Alvarez to Santiago de Cuba and Cape Maysi, 
Ibe men of colour inhabiting the towns, nearly equalled in 
dumber those scattered in the farms. I'rom 1811 till the 
cud of 1825, the island of Cuba has received along the 
"hole extent of its coast, by lawful and unlawful means, 
1^5,000 African blacks, of whom the custom-house of the 
Havaunali only, registered, from 1811 to 1820, about 116,000. 
Tins newly introduced mass has no doubt been spread more 
