Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/151

Rh the contemplation of the hard lot reserved for their posterity, by an exclusion from the first and most honourable distinctions in society, have embraced celibacy, that they might not beget an offspring whose sole inheritance would be an obscure poverty; .or, lastly (and this refle6lion is extended to the above mentioned casts), that description of vagabonds and disorderly persons, who have no other resources for their advancement, except the vain and fruitless desire of acquiring riches. Individuals of this description do not increase and multiply, because the principal rule for the propagation of living creatures is subsistence. A species is augmented or diminished, in proportion to the means it possesses of procuring nourishment. The she wolves are more prolific than the ewes; and there are, notwithstanding, more rams than wolves.

If, therefore, the deficiency of hands for the rural operations, and the small internal consumption of the productions, be, in Peru, insuperable obstacles to the progress of agriculture; that which is opposed to the external commerce, by the distance of the country, by its local situation, and by the want of canals, bridges, and roads, to facilitate the traffic, and reduce the expences of the carriage and transport, is not less so. Without these resources, to aid the sales and exports of the superfluous commodities, there can be neither commerce, culture, nor communication. They are, in the body politic, what the blood-vessels are in the human body: if the latter give a free passage to the blood, and maintain motion and life, the former redouble and sustain the transmittals and exchanges, augmenting in a similar degree the activity and bulk of the enterprizes. The prejudices occasioned by tliis defect, have been recently pointed out, with much energy, by a Spaniard,