The creole negroes of Recife are, generally speaking, mechanics of all descriptions; but they have not yet reached the higher ranks of life, as gentlemen, as planters, and as merchants. Some of them have accumulated considerable sums of money, and possess many slaves, to whom they teach their own trade, or these slaves are taught other mechanical employments by which they may become useful. They work for their owners, and render to them great profits, for every description of labour is high, and that which requires any degree of skill bears even a higher comparative value than the departments of which a knowledge is more easily attained. The best church and image painter of Pernambuco is a black man, who has good manners, and quite the air of a man of some importance, though he does not by any means assume too much. The negroes are excluded from the priesthood[211]; and from the offices which the mulattos may obtain through their evasion of the law, but which the decided and unequivocal colour of the negro entirely precludes him from aspiring to. In law all persons who are not white, and are born free, class equally; manumitted slaves are placed upon the same footing as persons born free. However, although the few exclusions which exist against the negroes are degrading, still in some instances they are befriended by them. They are unable, owing to their colour, to serve in the regiments of the line, or in any regiments excepting those which are exclusively their own; but by means of this regulation they escape the persecutions under which the other casts suffer during the time of recruiting. The officers and men of the Henrique regiments are so united to each other, that the privates and subalterns are less liable to be oppressed by any white man in office even than the soldiers of the mulatto regiments. Of these latter the officers, having a considerable tinge of white, sometimes lean towards the wishes of the _capitam-mor_, or some other rich white officer, instead of protecting his soldiers.