ut instruction, without energy, and much
under the dominion of their priests. 4. The slaves, mulatto and black;
the former enterprising and intelligent, the latter brave, and of very
important weight, into whatever scale they throw themselves; but he
thinks they will side with their masters. 5. The conquered Indians,
cowardly, not likely to take any side, nor important which they take. 6.
The free Indians, brave and formidable, should they interfere, but not
likely to do so, as being at a great distance. I asked him the numbers
of these several classes, but he could not give them. The first, he
thought very inconsiderable; that the second formed the body of the
freemen; the third equal to the two first; the fourth, to all the
preceding: and as to the fifth, he could form no idea of their
proportion. Indeed, it appeared to me, that his conjectures as to the
others were on loose grounds. He said he knew from good information,
there were three hundred thousand inhabitants in the city of Mexico. I
was still more cautious with him than with the Brazilian, mentioning
it as my private opinion (unauthorized to say a word on the subject,
otherwise), that a successful revolution was still at a distance with
them; that I feared they must begin by enlightening and emancipating
the minds of their people; that as to us, if Spain should give us
advantageous terms of commerce, and remove other difficulties, it was
not probable that we should relinquish certain and present advantages,
though smaller, for uncertain and future ones, however great. I was led
into this caution by observing, that this gentleman was intimate at the
Spanish ambassador's, and that he was then at Paris, employed by Spain
to settle her boundaries with France, on the Pyrenees. He had much
the air of candor, but that can be borrowed; so that I was not able to
decide about him in my own mind.

Led by a unity of subject, and a desire to give Congress as general a
view of the disposition of our southern countrymen, as my information
enables me, I will add an article which, old and insulated, I did not
think important enough to mention at the time I received it. You will
remember, Sir, that during the late war, the British papers often
gave details of a rebellion in Peru. The character of those papers
discredited the information. But the truth was, that the insurrections
were so general, that the event was long on the poise. Had Commodore
Johnson, then expected on that