Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/146

120 vated, and the commerce and circulation of their produce exercised and facilitated; it being evident that a depopulated state cannot make any successful progress in these branches of industry. But, in the same way as every kingdom has need of agriculture for its subsistence, so has every increase, to be sustained, need of a population either proper or extraneous, that is, of purchasers who may secure to the cultivator the enjoyment of the fruit of his labours. Where there is, therefore, a deficiency of hands for the rural operations, and of mouths for the consumption, encouragement is void; insomuch, that abundance itself, far from constituting riches, becomes real and substantial misery.

If the situation of Peru be regulated by these principles, it must be acknowledged that there are insuperable difficulties and impediments, which oppose the ideal projects of felicity founded on the augmentation of her natural productions, and on the assiduous cultivation of her plains. Compared with her extensive territory, the population forms what may be termed a desert: a million of inhabitants, or, according to the highest computation, a million and four hundred thousand, is a sad disproportion to so many leagues of extent.

Spain, in a smaller space, maintained in the time of Julius Cæsar fifty-two millions of souls. It appears by a discourse addressed, in 1624, to the churches of Castille, by Manrique, Bishop of Bajadoz, that in his time there was a deficiency of seven parts in ten of the ancient population; and, according to the national political writers, this vacuity is the real cause of there being, in one of the most fertile provinces, that of Estramadura, uncultivated lands capable of producing more than