BLACK INHABITANTS. 
397 
total population of the seven united provinces at nine 
hundred thousand souls, it appeared to me that the Indians 
made only one-ninth ; while at Mexico they form nearly one 
half of the inhabitants. 
Considering the Caribbean Sea, of which the gulf of 
Mexico makes a part, as an interior sea with several mouths, 
it is important to fix our attention on the political relations 
arising out of this singular configuration of the New Con- 
tinent, between countries placed around the same basin. 
Notwithstanding the isolated state in which most of the 
mother-countries endeavour to hold their colonies, the agi- 
tations that take place are not the loss communicated from 
one to the other. The elements of discord are everywhere 
the same ; and, as it by instinct, an understanding is esta- 
blished between men of the same colour, although separated 
by difference of language, and inhabiting opposite coasts. 
That American Mediterranean formed by the shores of 
Venezuela, New Grenada, Mexico, the United States, and 
the West India Islands, counts upon its borders near a 
million and a half of free and enslaved blacks ; hut so un- 
equally distributed, that there are very few to the south, 
and scarcely any in the regions of the west. Their great 
accumulation is on the northern and eastern coasts, which 
may be said to he the African part of the interior basin. 
The commotions which since 1792 have broken out in St. 
Domingo, have naturally been propagated to the coasts of 
Venezuela. So long as Spain possessed those fine colonies 
in tranquillity, the little insurrections of the slaves were 
easily repressed ; but when a struggle of another kind, that 
for independence, began, the blacks by their menacing posi- 
tion excited alternately the apprehensions of the opposite 
parties ; and the gradual or instantaneous abolition of slavery 
has been proclaimed in different regions of Spanish America, 
less from motives of justice and humanity, than to secure 
the aid of an intrepid race of men, habituated to privation, 
and fighting for their own cause. I found in the narrative 
of the voyage of Girolamo Benzoni, a curious passage, which 
proves tliat the apprehensions caused by the increase of the 
black population are of very old date. These apprehensions 
will cease onlv where governments shall second by laws the 
pro<>T“9*iive reforms which refinement of manners, opinion, 
