TABLE OF GREAT POLITICAL DIVISIONS.
COLUMN 1 : NAME.
COLUMN 2 : SURFACE IN SQUARE LEAGUES OF 20 TO AN EQUINOCTIAL DEGREE.
COLUMN 3 : POPULATION (1823).
Surface Pop.
1. Possessions of the Spanish Americans : 371,380 : 16,785,000.
Mexico or New Spain : 75,830 : 6,800,000.
Guatemala : 16,740 : 1,600,000.
Cuba and Porto Rico : 4,430 : 800,000.
Columbia—Venezuela : 33,700 : 785,000.
Columbia—New Grenada and Quito : 58,250 : 2,000,000.
Peru : 41,420 : 1,400,000.
Chili : 14,240 : 1,100,000.
Buenos Ayres : 126,770 : 2,300,000.
2. Possessions of the Portuguese
Americans (Brazil) : 256,990 : 4,000,000.
3. Possessions of the
Anglo-Americans (United States) : 174,300 : 10,220,000.
From the statistical researches which have been made in several countries of Europe, important results have been obtained by a comparison of the relative population of maritime and inland provinces. In Spain these relations are to one another as nine to five; in the United Provinces of Venezuela, and, above all, in the ancient Capitania-General of Caracas, they are as thirty-five to one. How powerful soever may be the influence of commerce on the prosperity of states, and the intellectual development of nations, it would be wrong to attribute in America, as we do in Europe, to that cause alone the differences just mentioned. In Spain and Italy, if we except the fertile plains of Lombardy, the inland districts are arid and abounding in mountains or high table-lands: the meteorological circumstances on which the fertility of the soil depends are not the same in the lands bordering on the sea, as they are in the central provinces. Colonization in America has generally begun on the coast, and advanced slowly towards the interior; such is its progress in Brazil and in Venezuela. It is only where the coast is unhealthy, as in Mexico and New Grenada, or sandy and exempt from rain as in Peru, that the population is concentrated on the mountains, and the table-lands of the interior. These local circumstances are too often overlooked in considerations on the future fate of the Spanish colonies; they communicate a peculiar character to some of those countries, the physical and moral analogies of which are less striking than is commonly supposed. Considered with reference to the distribution of the population, the two provinces of New Grenada and Venezuela, which have been united in one political body, exhibit the most complete contrast. Their capitals (and the position of capitals always denotes where population is most concentrated) are at such unequal distances from the trading coasts of the Caribbean Sea, that the town of Caracas, to be placed on the same parallel with Santa-Fe de Bogota, must be transplanted southward to the junction of the Orinoco with the Guaviare, where the mission of San Fernando de Atabapo is situated.