Though Peru be a land of gold and silver, yet nowhere are the precious metals in greater requisition than in Lima, where the scarcity of circulating capital is shown by the revolting dealings of the common usurer, who extorts from the victims of his cupidity two or three per cent. a month on the advances he makes; and the current and regular rate of interest in that country is one per cent. a month, or twelve per cent. a year.
The “plata,” or money, covers more delinquencies than charity itself; hence we hear such expressions as these: “Nada es mala que gana la plata,” viz. Nothing is bad that wins the money. “Bien, le costo su plata!”—Very well, (what is it to us?) it cost him his money! “Porque no tener su gusto cuando le cuesta la plata?”—Why not have his pleasure when it costs him the money?—as if money, forsooth, could annihilate the moral turpitude of sinful enjoyment.
We cannot give the reader a better idea of the popular ethics of Peru in the present day, than in the words of a friend long resident in the country, who said that Peru had the advantage over every other country he had seen,—that in it “no one need ever be put out of countenance for anything he can say or do.” By so broad a statement as that conveyed in the expression now cited, we would only desire to represent the bad state of moral feeling prevalent among the bulk of a people not long since let loose to follow their own unrestrained wishes; without thereby meaning to deny the fact, that, in Lima more particularly, we often find that good natural dispositions and obliging manners do in no small degree supply, in the ordinary intercourse of life, the place of higher principle. And yet more: we would honourably except from this general description many individual examples of eminent virtue to be met in Peruvian society; striking instances of disinterested friendship and kindness (of which the writer himself has more than once been the favoured object); and the most generous, amiable, and praiseworthy bearing, which we have seen displayed by them in their domestic and social relations.
If we consider all things in the circumstances of the Peruvians, their story from first to last must awaken an interest in the mind of every inquirer into their past and present state, rather than dispose him to censure them indiscriminately for their errors. We may indeed wonder not to find fewer good qualities among them; and, on the other hand, not to see the fiercer passions that utterly brutalize human nature, and agitate every corner of society, more called into action among a medley of ignorant and discordant castes, passing without adequate preparation from one extreme of government to another, and from one civil broil into another of greater confusion and misrule.