with those contained in the demonstrative plan annexed to the present reflections, the losses which celibacy occasioned, in this particular way, will be seen. The misfortune is, that the marriages have not been augmented, in proportion to the decrease of the numbers of the female votaries of religion.
Those of the monks have likewise undergone a similar diminution. In the above statement the total amount of them was two thousand one hundred and fifty-five, including lay brothers, slaves, &c. The Dominicans were the most numerous, the four houses belonging to that institution having contained four hundred and twenty-eight souls. The Franciscans were in number three hundred and ninety-three; the Augustins, three hundred and twenty-one; and the Mercedarios, two hundred and forty-one. In each of these statements the domestics are constantly included. The charitable institutions stiled Beaterios have received an augmentation of eighty-four persons: formerly the number did not exceed two hundred and six; but it amounts at present to three hundred and ten. The apartments destined to contain all this population were heretofore one hundred and fifteen: they are now one hundred and seventy-nine, besides the thirty to be found in the quarter stiled El Cercado.
In the year 1746, at which time Count Superunda was viceroy of these realms, by a calculation drawn from the registers of the friars confessors, the population, including that of the adjacent territory, was rated at sixty thousand souls[1].
- ↑ As, in the year 1700, the enumeration amounted to thirty-seven thousand two hundred and fifty-nine persons only, insomuch that there is, in the above estimate,
