ART. IV.-An Account of the present state of the Island of Puerto Rico. By Colonel FLINTER, of the General Staff of the army of her Most Catholic Majesty. 8vo. London: 1834.

THIS

HIS volume has the recommendation of presenting us with a full and interesting account of a valuable island, less known in this country than even Japan or Madagascar; and it possesses an additional value in our eyes, from being the production of a writer who has evidently formed his opinions on his own account. His sentiments do not savour of any class or school: on the contrary, he frequently advances, in the same breath, positions which are usually maintained by persons of opposite principles in political matters. Thus, being an officer in the service of Spain, he has a high respect for the administration of the late King Ferdinand, and a thorough contempt for all the various liberal sects which overturned his absolute throne, and have now taken his daughter under their protection. He moreover holds in utter abhorrence all the promoters of the South American revolution, and all persons and things connected with the new republican governments; which afford, it must be confessed, but too good grounds for his sarcastic remarks. Here, however, besides the feelings of the soldier and the royalist, additional bitterness is imparted to the Colonel's pen, by his recollection of the sufferings and losses of his fatherin-law, Don Francisco Arambureo, one of the wealthiest landed proprietors of Caraccas.' But at the same time he is a strong partisan of negro emancipation; and his book, written before, but published after, the passing of that great enactment by the British Parliament, contains some of the most pointed examples which have yet been adduced in its favour. He is moreover a political economist; and has garnished his pages with a great many citations from Say, who appears to be his favourite authority. with all his ardour for the cause of free trade in general, he nevertheless impresses upon his government, the necessity of protecting the manufactures of the Peninsula: these he asserts the colonists of Cuba and Puerto Rico will not take, though as good and better than those of France and England, owing to a perverse prejudice; and they should be compelled, in his opinion, to adopt more impartial sentiments by the gentle arguments of the Custom House; while, on the other hand, they should be restrained from importing provisions from abroad, that they may be encouraged to develope their own agricultural resources. If, without entering into our military author's speculations on these subjects, we shall content ourselves with the facts which he has brought be

But

fore us, concerning the present condition of this island, we shall find, in his details, some singular views of a state of society which was not believed to exist in the West Indies, and which, according to theories generally received amongst us, was a priori conceived impossible.

Colonel Flinter appears to have commanded, for several years, the regiment of Spanish troops which was in permanent garrison at Puerto Rico; and must have had ample opportunities of becoming fully acquainted with its internal condition. It will be perceived, no doubt, that his local partialities sometimes lead him into apparent overstatements and manifest contradictions; but every candid reader will make allowance for the spirit of exaggeration which appears occasionally to dictate his eulogies on his favourite colony.

The early history of Puerto Rico affords few features of interest. Although one of the oldest colonies of the Spanish crown, it served for three centuries only as a convict station; and its free population presented, until a few years ago, a marked specimen of the besotted indolence which characterised a Spanish settlement of the old times. The military and civil expenses were defrayed by remittances from Mexico; and it was not until the revolution caused these remittances to cease in 1810, that the island, owing to the extreme embarrassment of its financial condition, began to attract the notice of the mother country. In 1815 a decree was published in its behalf, distinguished, like many of the early acts of the restored government, by its enlightened sagacity. But this decree, whilst it greatly encouraged free industry, unfortunately at the same time gave an impulse to the employment of slave labour, which had hitherto been unused, rather from indolence and want of capital than from motives of humanity. Colonists were invited to the island on the most liberal terms-lands were allotted gratis-the settlers were freed from direct taxes, and, for a certain number of years, from the tithes and alcabala; as well as from the exportation duties, which formed one of the most impolitic features of the old Spanish system.

From the period of this decree, the advance of Puerto Rico in wealth and population has been unexampled, even in the virgin regions of America. A great additional impulse was given by the arrival of capitalists, driven by civil war from the Spanish Main; men distinguished in the more prosperous times of South America for their steady regularity and probity in the transaction of business. Our limits will not allow us even to abridge our author's account of the rapid improvement of the island; and of the manner in which her soil has been cultivated, until she is become, next to Brazil and Cuba, the most formidable rival with

which our colonies have to contend in the production of their staple articles, and at the same time a granary competent to supply all the ordinary wants of her abundant population.

The island appears to be one of the most lovely of all those regions of loveliness which are washed by the Caribbean Sea. Even in that archipelago it is distinguished by the luxuriance of its vegetation and the soft variety of its scenery. It comprises every kind of tropical landscape in a space not much exceeding the area of one of the larger English counties. Like Jamaica, it is divided from east to west by a range of forestcovered mountains, which do not appear to exceed 3000 or 4000 feet in height, but which are sufficient to create a very marked difference of climate between their opposite declivities. The northern district is moist, subject not only to the periodical rains of the West Indies, but visited also by occasional showers. Hence its undulating surface is adapted for pasture and the more ordinary kinds of cultivation, and is intersected by numerous perennial rivers; whilst the southern part of the island is frequently without rain for many months together, although even here, water, according to our author, is always found at half a yard beneath the surface. The sugar-cane, notwithstanding the drought, thrives abundantly, and most of the chief plantations of the island are formed on this coast. This inestimable benefit of moisture, Puerto Rico derives from its forests, which as yet clothe a large portion of the interior; the thick cover at once attracting the rain and preventing evaporation. By the laws of the colony every person who cuts down a tree is bound to plant three in its place. But it is to be feared that a law so difficult of enforcement is habitually violated, and that it will come, like some other islands, which formerly exhibited a similar feature, to present a naked surface to the ineffectual vapours of the Atlantic: its fertility will then diminish, and its perennial rivers waste away; even as the clearing of the forests on various parts of the Mediterranean coasts,-in peninsular Greece and Sicily, for example,—which were well wooded within the historical era, has diminished the classical rivers of antiquity into mere occasional torrents.

Although the climate of Puerto Rico does not appear to differ materially, as far as its effects can be measured by instruments, from that of the other islands of the Gulf of Mexico, yet its inhabitants certainly seem to enjoy a more than ordinary exemption from the evils which afflict humanity in these sickly regions. The mortality, according to our author's tables, does not exceed that which prevails in some of the healthier 'countries of Europe. A still more singular characteristic_ appears to distinguish this island from its neighbours, namely, the great

deficiency of native animals of every sort; and especially the entire absence (if our author can be credited) of those noxious reptiles and insects which seem to inherit the rest of the West Indies as their peculiar possession.

The population of Puerto Rico amounted, according to the Spanish census of 1830, to 323,858; of which 127,287 were free people of colour, and 34,240 only, slaves. But as the numbers of all the classes were probably underrated; and as there was every inducement to return an under estimate of the slaves, in order to avoid the capitation, our author calculates, apparently on good grounds, the whole number at 400,000, and the slaves at 45,000; or nearly 180 inhabitants to the square mile.

Here, then, we have a free white population of 200,000 souls, or half the entire amount of inhabitants. What causes can have produced a result so utterly different from that which exists in all the West India islands, except those of Spain? Whence arises this numerous and prosperous Creole yeomanry, (for we shall see that a great proportion of them are owners or occupiers of land,) whilst other colonies are divided between a few white proprietors, and a degraded multitude of slaves, with hardly a vestige of an intermediate class? Such was not always the state of our own islands. Without admitting the exaggerated accounts of the early greatness of Barbadoes, we have abundant evidence that Antigua, St Kitts, Dominica, and other colonies, possessed, a hundred years ago, a multitude of English settlers; who have gradually dwindled away, by intemperance, by their own misconduct, and above all through the extension of the sugar cultivation, and of its companion the slave trade, to the small remnant which now exists. We believe, that if any causes should arise to give a sudden impulse to the colonial industry of this now happy Spanish island, it would soon follow-as Cuba is already following the baneful course of our own settlements, and purchase wealth at the expense of happiness. But this is an opinion which our readers will be best enabled to estimate, by observing the results displayed in the work before us.

Of the free inhabitants of Puerto Rico, a very small proportion is settled in the towns: indeed, the capital, San Juan, with about 8000 souls, is the only place which seems to merit such a title. Some of the best, in point of connexions and respectability, are the descendants of military men, who, during the long period when the island was a mere garrison, formed alliances and settled within it. These people maintain the pride of their descent with all the stateliness of grandees; and some of them are opulent. Wealthy merchants and planters (many of whom are foreigners) form the next class; but the latter, fortunately for

the happiness if not for the riches of the island, form altogether but a small, and not now a very thriving class. The number of sugar estates is about 300; chiefly situated on the southern coast. They hardly pay at present, according to our author, the expenses of cultivation. But there are, in addition, some 1300 small plantations belonging to poor cultivators, who, growing only an acre or two of cane, devote their attention chiefly to the raising of provisions. There are 148 coffee estates; but in this branch of cultivation, as well as that of sugar, the larger capitalists have been gradually losing money and abandoning their estates; whilst the small farmer who pursues various lines of industry on his little tract of land, has been able, in this way, to increase his comforts.

It is this class which forms the distinctive feature of the population. A numerous race of cultivators-brave, for their courage was largely tried in the exigencies of the South American warsof white blood, and Spanish feelings, opinions, and prejudices, is something so widely different from what is to be found in our own islands or those of France that we are almost tempted to abandon the principles of political economy, and to feel grateful for the want of enterprise, and slothful contentment, which undoubtedly have prevented the conversion of the island into one wide sugar factory, with white overseers and negro labourers. Our author gives the extraordinary number of 19,000 proprietors of land in perpetuity: nearly 18,000 of these are small occupiers, raising provisions and herding cattle. The Xivaros-as the white country population are called are, it cannot be denied, an indolent race; who seem to multiply under an easy condition of existence, without adding much to the commercial wealth or social refinement of their country.

Like the peasantry of Ireland, they are proverbial for their hospitality : and, like them, they are ever ready to fight on the slightest provocation. They swing themselves to and fro in their hammocks all day long, smoking their cigars, and scraping a guitar. The plantain grove which surrounds their houses, and the coffee-tree, which grows almost without cultivation, afford them a frugal subsistence. The cabins are

thatched with the leaves of the palm-tree; the sides are often open, or merely constructed of the same sort of leaves as the roof-such is the mildness of the climate. Some cabins have doors, others have none. There is nothing to dread from robbers, and if there were banditti, their poverty would protect them from violence. A few calabash shells, and earthen pots-one or two hammocks made of the bark of the palm-treetwo or three game-cocks, and a machete-form the extent of their moveable property. A few coffee-trees and plantains, a cow and a horse, an acre of land in corn or sweet potatoes, constitute the property of what would be denominated a comfortable Xivaro-who, mounted on his