of taxation, and were to be the precursors of some heavy assessments on the colonial estates. When to this is added, the carelessness, perhaps also the indifference on the part both of proprietors and officers, and the certainty that the errors will not correct themselves, but be invariably on one side, it is not unreasonable to suppose, that the number not only of the slaves, but of all classes of inhabitants exceeds very considerably the returns of the authorized census. Humboldt himself remarks, that in 1804 he examined, together with persons who possessed great local knowledge, the enumeration of Don Luis de las Casas, (1791) and it appeared to them, that the population could not at that time have been less than 362,700, while the official census gave but 272,141. A new census was ordered in 1828, but its details have only partially reached us.

The city of Havana has increased in population and wealth, in the same proportion as other parts of the island. The following table will show the number of its inhabitants at different periods.

When to this is added, remarks Humboldt, the troops of the garrison, the mariners, the monks, the "religieuses" of all descriptions, and the strangers not domiciliated, who all pass under the head of transeuntes, the whole population of the city and its suburbs, cannot at this day (1825) be less than 130,000.

The kindness of a friend has put into our hands the census of the Havana for the year 1828. The following are the aggregate numbers of each class of citizens:

In a letter from one of the most intelligent inhabitants of Cuba, which accompanied this census, it was remarked, "This census is defective as to the number of the inhabitants. You may safely add 10,000. The inhabitants were generally apprehensive that the object of it was the acquisition of data in order to impose a direct or capitation tax on them, and, therefore, many concealed the names of part of their slaves, and others even absconded, so as to escape the notice of the police officers employed in that operation." When, besides, we further notice that some of the adjacent villages or suburbs (arrabalos) included by Humboldt, are not comprehended in this census, we may, with great probability, allow 130,000 as the number of inhabitants of the Havana for 1828.

The following table will shew the increase of the city of Matanzas in ten years :

The most remarkable feature in the population of Cuba, when compared with all the other islands of the West-Indies, unless we except, perhaps, the other Spanish island of Porto Rico, is the great proportion of the white population. This is owing, in a great measure, to the manner in which the island was originally settled. The first emigrants were poor, they settled on the hills and open plains to take care of cattle, they afterwards added the care of bees, and some cultivated small fields of that tobacco for which this island has been so celebrated. They were, and continue to be a careless, unenlightened, indolent race. Their stock, and the plantains which grow in spite of them, furnish their food, and the skins of their cattle supply them with much of their clothing. Of this class of proprietors, a recent traveller* remarked, that they seemed to have no care but to bury the money which the superintendant of their hatos brought them for their cattle, and again to dig it up when they went to the cockpit to gamble, or were obliged to pay the expenses of those interminable lawsuits which they bequeath from generation to generation. These people, however, constitute the physical force of the Island.

* Massa sur l'Ile de Cuba, 1825, p. 302. We quote from Humboldt.

The following table will give an interesting view of the population of Cuba compared with the other territories in America, in which slavery exists:

States of 10,525,000 8,575,000 285,000 1,665,000 Slaves,
America.!

The following statements will shew the different fate which has attended the unfortunate race of Africans when brought into the United States and into the West-Indies :

Mr. Gallatin, says Humboldt, calculates that the United States have never received from Africa more than 300,000 blacks. From this stock, the numbers in 1823, amounted to 250,000 free people of colour, and 1,665,000 slaves. 1,915,000 altogether.

One cause to which this great decrease in the numbers of the African race may be ascribed, is certainly the unequal proportion of the sexes which were originally imported. For some time females were considered on sugar estates almost as an incumbrance, and on those of Cuba, they are even now only in the proportion of one to four. In the Partido of Batabano, which contained in 1818, thirteen sugar estates (Ingenios) and seven coffee plantations, (Cafetales) there were 2226 men and only 257 females-eight to one.

This, though one of powerful agency, has not been the sole cause of the diminution of the black population, for, in 1823, the females in the island of Jamaica exceeded the males 171,916 to 170,466, so that an equilibrium between the sexes had actually been restored-and must have been nearly so for some time. If we were to judge by report, not by observation, we should say that sufficient care had not been taken in the West-Indies to relieve their slaves, by machinery or by the agency of animals, from the most laborious parts of the works which are necessary to be performed, those which break the constitution rapidly, and, perhaps, incurably. Too much may have been exacted from them, but we know that in manufactures, where the labour is steady, but comparatively light, operatives are called upon to work for many more hours in the twenty-four, than are ever required from the negroes in the United States or in the WestIndies.

One other table on the comparative population of Cuba and the adjacent islands, we will offer to our readers, to show the great difference which exists between what this Island now is, and what it may become.

From this table it appears, that if the population of Cuba was as dense as that of Jamaica, it would exceed three millions of inhabitants, and would not then contain half as many inhabitants to the square league, as many countries of Europe. Indeed, with a population like that of the Department of the North in France, of 5082 to the square league, and who will say that it is not capable of sustaining an equal number of inhabitants, its population would amount to 18,371,430. Java, almost exactly of the same size as Cuba, with a soil not more fertile, and with districts more mountainous and uninhabitable than any in the latter island, contained in 1815, 4,615,250 inhabitants. These, however, are but vague speculations-the rapid increase in the population of Cuba arose from the importation of slaves, which increased with the wealth of the inhabitants, and in ten years, from 1810 to 1820, amounted to 115,420. This source of population is now cut off from them, and although a few are still introduced by an illicit commerce, yet, from the numberless difficulties and dangers, and merited odium that surround this trade, it must soon cease, and the population of Cuba must augment from its present stock of inhabitants. What will be the ratio of increase when left to its own resources, is a problem yet to be solved. From the inequality in the sexes which exists at present among the slaves, being for the whole island nearly in the proportion of 2 to 1, the population must for a time diminish. We hope, for the sake of humanity, it will afterwards increase, and advance as steadily and rapidly as it ought to do in so fine a climate, and in a country of which scarcely onetenth part is yet in cultivation.

In perusing the "Essai Politique," we were frequently amused at noticing how, amidst his declamations against slavery and the slave trade, Humboldt appears to become deeply interested in the rapid improvement of Cuba, without appearing to recollect that the increase of population and consequently of production was artificial and compulsory, and left no sound basis on which to build any speculations for the future. It will only be after the slave trade shall have been interdicted for a full generation, for at least thirty years, that any valuable conclusions as to its effects on the West-Indies, can be legitimately drawn.

Humboldt makes a short digression to the ancient population of Cuba, more, however, for the purpose of shewing the little dependence which can be placed on the statistical accounts of the ancient Spanish historians than of forming himself any theory. This island was supposed to have contained at the time of its conquest in 1511, one million of inhabitants, which, in 1517. VOL. IV.

No. 8.

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