The patriot legislators have enacted that it is illegal for any master to apply the whip or scourge, “azote,” in chastising his slave. The ordinary mode of punishment in the capital is to send the offender for correction to a “panaderia” or bakehouse, where his labour is increased or mitigated according to his conduct while there. In most ancient families, who have yet preserved sufficient fortune to allow them to keep up some retinue, we find a number of slave attendants whose progenitors served in the same family of distinction for a long series of years; and thus a mutual attachment has grown up between the parties, that makes them view each other with that sort of interest which we observe between masters and old servants at home. It is not unusual for a master on his death-bed to reward the fidelity of a faithful slave by granting him his liberty; and we have witnessed some very touching instances of gratitude shown by well-educated white women towards those female slaves, or, we might say, devoted friends, on whose willing services and attention they themselves often placed their confidence in the hour of sickness or adversity. These recollections are in our mind associated with those amiable traits of human nature which unite the great family of mankind; but it must be observed that from such instances, particularly creditable to the character of individuals, nothing can be argued in favour of slavery as such, which never can be otherwise than unjust and unchristian. Since the triumphs of patriotism first cheered the hopes of the people, since the very slaves, intoxicated with aguardiente or momentary enthusiasm, joined aloud in the chants in praise of liberty, numberless families in the capital have gradually sunk into increasing poverty, of which a common consequence is, that individuals who can boast of the purity of their origin, or who, in native phrase, count it no plebeian privilege to say that their _four quarters_ are Biscayan, now find themselves reduced to lend out their old domestic slaves on hire as a means of support; the slaves being obliged to pay a certain moderate proportion of their daily wages or earnings to their proper owners. A male slave, when thus hired out in Lima, is understood to pay his owner one real, or a sixpence, out of his day’s wages or earnings; and women, when hired out as nurses, are usually paid fifteen dollars a month; of which they pay four dollars to their proper owners, and the rest they may do what they please with: others again go out as cooks, or are employed as laundry-maids, &c.