Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/170

144 With the free trade, this capital has gained much in the resources which contribute to its maintenance, and to the conveniences of life. Until the present time, coffee-houses, and banking-houses, were unknown to the inhabitants of Lima. The magazines of different descriptions were fewer by at least a third. Notwithstanding this, many persons are to be found, more especially among the abettors of the ancient system, who delight in expatiating on the poverty of Lima, and who regret the times and customs that are past. To form a just estimate of this opinion, it is necessary to come to an agreement as to the acceptation of what they name poverty. If they make it refer to those overgrown capitals which were to be found, at the commencement, and even in the middle of the eighteenth century, in the hands of a few persons, sometimes unjust, or, at the least, the sole masters of the prices, and which capitals do not exist at the present time; if they mean to say, that the country is poor, because the gains in each enterprize are small, in proportion as they are divided among many; in that very suspicious point of view they are right. But if their proposition be considered as it relates to the common felicity, then are they manifestly wrong. To be satisfied of this truth, let the present free and rapid circulation of specie be considered, and the greater degree of prosperity which results from the mediocrity of condition of the citizens, all of whom, from the merchant down to the petty trader and the artisan, are easy in their circumstances. The direct navigation, the erection of a custom-house, the enlargement of the public warehouses for tobacco, and the augmentation of the troops, have multiplied the sources of circulation. The game of chances alone,