enthusiasm. Shall we feel no impulse of national emulation? Shall we not profit by their great examples? Shall we witness, in the splendid career of science, their successes, and their triumphs, and make no effort to give to our country, on the page of literary history, a "habitation and a name." In the distribution of talents to nations and to individuals, nature has been liberal and just. If she elevates but few to pre-eminent greatness, she condemns but few to inevitable obscurity; to most she gives the power and the opportunity of being useful: but while she gives us talents, she leaves their employment to our own discretion. Let me hope, gentlemen, that this society, small and humble as may have been its origin, may yet render some service to our country; that it may awaken a spirit of philosophic inquiry, that it may recal some of our youths from idle and unworthy pursuits, to the labours and pleasures of literature, that it may give to science some popularity. The small seed scattered in the wilderness may become a tree, under whose branches the birds of the air shall find food and shelter. The nameless rivulet may emerge to splendor and to usefulness: but to obtain our objects, or justify our views, it will be necessary that we advance in our career with a zeal that shall not be extinguished by occasional failures, and a perseverance unconquered by temporary disappointments. GENERAL VIEW OF SPANISH AMERICA. [From an Exposition of the Commerce of Spanish America, with some observations on its importance to the United States. By Don Manuel Torres, Deputy from the States of New Grenada.] SPANISH AMERICA, enjoying a diversity of climate, and various degrees of temperature, from the most intense heat to ice; comprehending a surface of 5,500 miles in length, and 3,000 miles in breadth, between 38 degrees north, and 54 south, affords all the different productions of other continents, including those of Asia; as tea, spices, gums, pearls, and precious stones; and yields, in the vegetable and mineral kingdoms, many productions which are peculiar to this continent. When we consider, on the one side, the efforts of its inhabitants to shake off the yoke of the Spanish government; the extraordinary progress of their revolution; and, on the other, the great interest which all nations have to partake directly of the rich commerce of that part of the new world, we cannot doubt of the complete emancipation of that extensive and fruitful country, nor of the establishment of a new, powerful, and independent empire, probably under the form of a representative and central government; which, uniting and disposing of its great resources, according to circumstances, may by a wise policy, prevent or stifle in testine divisions, and effectually maintain its independence: a government, at the same time, suitable, and prudently calculated for the degree of knowledge, habits, and manners of its inhabitants, will procure happiness to nineteen millions of people already civilized, and prepare the same advantage for a vast number of aborigines, who are yet in their primitive state of independence. Such an event cannot fail to influence the commerce, policy, and even the power of other nations, to an extent, at this time, not easy to calculate: but to the United States of North America, the particular circumstances, contiguity, and resources of the southern section of this continent, must be, above all, interesting. It becomes, then, highly important for the merchant, as well as the statesman, to be minutely acquainted with the different governments, and departments of commercial administration, into which Spanish America is divided; their natural and artificial productions; those which are annually exported to foreign coun tries, and their value; the ports in which trade is carried on; the four different classes or denominations into which these ports are divided; the particular laws and regulations of their customhouses; the amount of duties paid on the importation of goods, and the method of calculating them; their different kinds of coins, weights, and measures; the proportion which they bear to each other, and their exact relations with those of the United States; and, lastly, the mode of trading there to the greatest advantage. The work now offered to the public, contains the most complete and correct information upon these important points. It is founded, partly on the most authentic and faithful documents; partly on the observation of the author himself, made during a long residence in that country, in several situations the best calculated to acquire information; and moreover, it is the result of long and assiduous labour, and of some experience in public and private business. The Spanish-American continent is divided into four viceroyalties, namely: New Spain, New Granada, Peru, and Rio de la Plata; and into four captain-generalships, viz. Yucatan, Guatemala, Venezuela, and Chile. The eastern and western Floridas are dependent on the captain-generalship of the island of Cuba. Its islands in the Atlantic are, Cuba, the Spanish part of St. Domingo, Porto Rico, Margarita, and St. Andrews: in the Pacific Ocean, Chiloe and the island of Juan Fernandez, which are dependencies of the kingdom of Chile. The annual exportation of the product of its mines, agriculture, and industry, that of the islands included, exceeds one hundred millions of dollars; threefifths of which consist of five and a half millions of marks of silver, and of one hundred and fourteen thousand marks of gold. Providence, with a bountiful hand, has bestowed its choicest gifts on that happy land. Intersected in all directions by the lof tiest mountains, and watered by the finest rivers of the universe, the fertility of its soil is beyond comparison. From this singularity, and its situation between Asia, Europe, and the United States, as well as from the number of its excellent harbours, opening on the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans, that country seems to have been destined by the Author of Nature, to become the common centre of the commerce of the whole world. Its provinces, situated between the torrid and temperate zones, and blessed with a variety of climates and temperatures, vegetation is there perpetual. The vine, and the different species of grain, yield two, three, and some four crops a-year: they sow and reap in the same field; and orchards offer the fine contrast of flowers and fruits in all their different states of growth and perfection. In these fortunate regions nature is never idle. That country produces trees of an enormous size, of great durability, and excellent for the construction of ships; some of them being incorruptible under water: others afford timber so exquisitely fine as to rival in beauty, brilliancy, hardness, and variety of colours, the handsomest marbles; and some which, possessing different medicinal virtues, may be equally used for dyeing, as for works in the useful arts. It produces also delicious balms, gums, resins, bitumens, and a vast number of prolific vines, useful in the arts: lastly, all the productions of the Antilles are cultivated in its provinces, and at a third less expense and trouble, and with the only difference of being there of a superior quality. We find in it also different species of vegetable wool, which may be employed as materials in many branches of manufactures: innumerable aromatic and medicinal plants; some juicy and nourishing, others aquatic, containing salts and alkalis, useful in the arts, medicine, &c. &c.; grasses of species unknown to Europe, and a variety of roots, and of delicious and wholesome fruits. Spanish America is rich in valuable mines of gold, silver, platina, quicksilver, copper, iron, lead, zinc, and antimony; and it pos sesses also, on the banks of its navigable rivers, abundant stores of bitumen, coal, and other fossil substances. It is not less distinguished in the animal kingdom, either by the vast numbers of its quadrupeds, of which some are useful for agriculture and transportation, affording, at the same time, delicate flesh and valuable hides, and others for wool and furs exquisitely fine; or by the number of its birds, and the elegance and variety of their plumage. Its lakes and coasts swarm with amphibious animals, which add to the number of fine furs, and contribute, together with the whales and other sea monsters, to augment the variety of a productive branch of commerce. In those happy climates too, the Author of nature has been equally generous towards man's moral and physical organization. The American possesses intellectual capacity, and is capable of planning and executing great undertakings. He is an observer of nature, and an ingenious imitator. Mr. Jefferson has justly remarked, that "naturally eloquent, sublime ideas, precision, and accurate similitudes are familiar to him, even in his state of ignorance." Hospitable, generous, humane, mild, patient, fond of peace, possessing, in short, every natural aptitude to virtue, according to the venerable Palafox, bishop of Puebla, he is calculated for civil life, for the arts and sciences, and may become very useful to society in general, by serving the cause of mankind. He wants but a good education; and, if it be true that the government gives character to the man, what hopes arc we not to entertain of so fine and amiable a being! Under a government of his own choice, the South American will imitate his brother of the north: like him, he will love his country as he loves his family, opinion he will prefer to wealth, the public welfare will be his own, and justice, labour, and order will become as dear to the one as it is already to the other. The different products and articles of exportation, the departments where they are raised and gathered, the ports where they are shipped, their value exceeding sixty-three millions in the mineral kingdom, thirty-four in the vegetable, and four in the animal: all this, together with an estimate of the civilized population of Spanish America, are exhibited in the statistical table marked No. 1. ON HERALDRY. It is probable, that no science on earth conveys to its votaries a greater degree of enthusiasm than that of heraldry. One instance, at least, can be brought, unmatched in any other. The passage is taken from a scarce treatise in quarto, entitled, "The Blazon of Gentric," (a book recommended by Peacham, in his "Compleat Gentleman," as a book to be bought at any rate,) and runs thus "Christ was a gentleman, as to his flesh, by the part of his mother, (as I have read,) and might, if he had esteemed of the vaine glorye of this worlde (whereof he often sayde his kingdom was not) have borne coat-armour. The apostles, also, (as my authour telleth me) were gentlemen of bloud, and many of them descended from that worthy conqueror, Judas Machabeus; but through the tract of time, and persecution of wars, poverty oppressed the kindred, and they were constrayned to servile workes." P. 97. In the same book we find the exact arms, properly blazoned, of Semiramis, Queen of Babylon. |