The various races which compose the population are as follow:
1. Legitimate Spaniards or Europeans. In Buenos Ayres there are about three thousand; in the interior the number is very trifling, except in Potosi, which, being a mining country, contains many.
2. Creoles; legitimate descendants from Spaniards or Europeans.
3. Mestizos, the offspring of European and Indian parents.
4. Indians, almost all of whom have some mixture of Spanish blood.
5. Brown mixtures of Africans and Europeans.
All these races intermix without restraint, so that it is difficult to define the minor gradations, or to assign limits to the ever-multiplying varieties. Few families are entirely exempt from characteristics of Indian origin, physical as well as moral. It is well known that in the Spanish colonies little regard is now paid to purity of blood; the various regulations for preserving the races distinct have gradually become obsolete. This may be regarded as a momentary evil; but may it not be conducive in the long-run to the good of society, by concentrating the interests of the various classes, which, in remaining separate, might one day endanger the stability of the government, as has been the case in the French colony of St. Domingo?
In describing the orders of society in Buenos Ayres, it is necessary to premise that I mean to class them, not by degrees of birth, rank, or profession, but by the relative estimation in which they stand in point of property or public usefulness.
According to this scale, the first which comes under consideration is the commercial class. Every person belonging to it, from the huckster at the corner of the street, to the opulent trader in his warehouse, is dignified by the appellation of merchant; yet few individuals among them can lay just claim to that title, as they are wanting in that practical knowledge so essential in commercial dealings. They are averse to all speculation and enterprise; the common routine of their business is to send orders to Spain for the articles they need, and to sell by retail, at an exorbitant profit; beyond this they have hardly a single idea, and it has been said that their great reason for opposing a free trade with foreign nations, is a consciousness of their own mercantile inexperience. The more considerable houses are almost all branches of some European establishment; few of the Creoles have any regular trade. Those among them, however, who engage in it, are much more liberal in their transactions than the old Spaniards, and are observed to make less rapid fortunes, for their manly and independent character makes them spurn a miserable economy, and disdain to assume that church-going hypocrisy which must be practised twice or thrice a-day by those who would enrich themselves through the patronage of the opulent families. Among the inferior tradesmen, those who gain most are the _pulperos_, the warehousemen, and the shopkeepers. The _pulperos_ retail wine, brandy, candles, sausages, salt, bread, spices, wood, grease, brimstone, &c. Their shops (_pulperias_) are generally lounging-places for the idle and dissipated of the community. In Buenos Ayres there are about seven hundred of them, each more or less in the interest of some richer individual. The warehousemen sell earthen and glass ware, drugs, various articles of consumption, and some goods of home-manufacture, wholesale and retail. The shopkeepers amount to nearly six hundred in number; they sell woollen cloths, silks, cotton goods of all sorts, hats, and various other articles of wearing apparel. Many of them make considerable fortunes, those especially who trade to Lima, Peru, Chili, or Paraguay, by means of young men whom they send as agents or factors. There is another description of merchants, if such they may be called, who keep in the back-ground, and enrich themselves by monopolizing victuals, and by forestalling the grain brought to market from the interior, much to the injury of the agricultural interest.