an estimate of 5,800,000 for
the year 1803, and 6,500,000 for the year 1808. I might go farther, and
affirm that the constant insecurity of life and property in all but the
central parts of the republic is such as to keep down the natural
increase of a population never prolific, being made up of a combination
of uncongenial races--whites and Indians, whose intermixture leads to
sterility.

The census shows two fifths of the population to be pure Indians,
mostly laborers: this class would have been the one most likely to have
increased since the Revolution, had there remained the same amount of
employment and wages as formerly. In consequence of the abolition of
monopolies, the articles necessary for the comforts of life became much
cheaper and more easy of attainment to the laboring classes, which
would tend to increase the number of this class. These Indians,
moreover, had remained to a great extent free from the deleterious
intermixture of white blood. But the pure Indian, compared with the
pure Caucasian, is a race, under the most favorable circumstances, of
slow increase. The diseases hereditary among the Indians are aggravated
by promiscuous marriages, so that in California the missionaries used
to inquire diligently after a man's family connections, and compel a
convert to marry into his own clan, or not marry at all.

The Meztizos, or mixed races, constitute another two fifths of the
population. This is a less vigorous race than the pure Indian. They are
all the children of sin, mostly the offspring of illicit intercourse,
and are for this cause a feebler race than the offspring of the same
mixture where the man was only blessed with a single wife. As all
marriage of whites with Indians in New Spain was unlawful, these
Meztizos bore the same relation to the law in New Spain which the
mulattoes do in our Southern States.

RACES IN MEXICO.

The whites were set down at one million, or about one fifth of the
whole population, at the most prosperous period of the vice-kingdom. I
doubt if they now amount to half or even a quarter of that number, and
of this population there is a very vigorous French immigration, now
amounting to five or six thousand, and about as many Germans, a handful
of English, and still less Americans. The native white population does
not possess the physical energy requisite for rapid increase. They form
no portion of the laboring people; they live in effeminacy, and their
children are not