This forgiving system runs through every class and rank, from the highest to the lowest; but it is in the lofty circles that its influence is most worthy of particular notice. No one ventures to throw the first stone at the unfortunate; and there insensibly arises a gradation of vices and virtues, dove-tailing into each other so as to constitute a social whole, wherein the different degrees of moral deviation are all shaded by an overflowing charity. Pleasure and vice are nearly allied, and unhappily he who assumes the clerical habit and tonsure is not, in his own person, always a stranger to the voluptuous enjoyments of those around him; and the example of the man who rules the conscience of the people,—who grants them absolution, and allows them indulgences,[7]—will naturally be imitated: hence the indulgence of public opinion as regards individual and private character in Peru.
The slow and partial administration of justice is loudly complained of by those whose affairs require them to frequent courts of law in the Peruvian capital. The turbulent independence of the bad and disorderly, uncontrolled by any active and faithful police, is every day increasing, and already puts justice at defiance. The impudence, ill-acquired pecuniary influence, and intrigue of the false-hearted and boasting patriot, are daily seen to assume the embroidered insignia of “un benemerito de la patria!”—an honour which only in equity belongs to that rare character—the genuine patriot, who knows how to sacrifice his private convenience to the public good. The judges are often left without pecuniary means consistent with their honourable calling, because their salaries are not duly paid by the government; and if, under these circumstances, the balance of justice be disturbed in its equilibrium, the blame must not be all laid to the charge of those public functionaries who are the appointed ministers of the laws. The truth is, that, for a considerable time back, the sums that entered the national treasury were too scanty to support the pageantry of military array, together with the accumulated expences of a destructive and demoralizing warfare; and the pecuniary embarrassments arising from these circumstances, involved in their consequences some drawbacks in the civil administration of justice. But another popular cause, and that to which we would desire to draw the attention of the reader, for the unequal distribution of justice, is by common consent allowed to be, that in the best, as even now in the worst of times, the fair sex in Lima have enjoyed, from date immemorial, a more than regal prerogative, which the convulsions that effected what is called their political freedom, have in no essential particular obliterated or changed. It is called Empeño.