And first, with regard to the import trade:—
From a return furnished by the custom-house at Buenos Ayres of all their imports from foreign countries in the year 1822, it appears that they amounted to 11,287,622 Spanish dollars, according to their official valuation, which, generally speaking, may be considered to be about twenty per cent. below the wholesale prices in the market.
This amount was computed to be made up from the several foreign countries as under, viz:—
| 1st. | From | Great Britain to. the value of | 5,730,952 |
| 2nd. | " | France | 820,109 |
| 3rd. | " | the North of Europe—Holland, Germany, Sweden, and Denmark | 552,187 |
| 4th. | " | Gibraltar, Spain, and Sicily | 848,363 |
| 5th. | " | the United States | 1,368,277 |
| 6th. | " | Brazil | 1,418,768 |
| 7th. | " | China | 165,267 |
| 8th. | " | the Havana | 248,025 |
| 9th. | " | Chile and Peru | 115,674 |
| Spanish Dollars | 11,267,622 | ||
of which about 1,323,565 dollars were afterwards reshipped for ports on the neighbouring coast of Brazil, Monte Video, Chile, and Peru.
The important proportion of the British trade in this statement is very manifest; it amounts in fact to as much as the trade of all other foreign countries with Buenos Ayres put together. Comparing it with the importations in the most liberal period of the Spanish colonial system, it is more than double the average value[78] of the whole yearly imports into the Vice-Royalty, for the supply, not only of the provinces immediately attached to Buenos Ayres, but of all Upper Peru and Paraguay, containing a population numerically threefold that of the present republic of the Provinces of La Plata.
At that period British cotton manufactures were unknown at Buenos Ayres; silks from Spain, and French and German linens, alone were in use, the high prices of which generally confined them to the rich, the poorer classes being miserably clad in the coarse manufactures of the interior. It is true that in some parts of Peru and Paraguay the native manufactures were brought to some perfection, but it was by so tedious a process, that if they reached any degree of fineness they were rather articles of luxury and curiosity than of any advantage to the people at large for their domestic purposes. But when the port opened, and British manufactures became known, the low prices at which they were sold at once occasioned a great and general demand for them, and this has gone on yearly increasing, till, amongst the country population especially, the manufactures of Great Britain are become articles of primary necessity. The gaucho is everywhere clothed in them. Take his whole equipment—examine everything about him—and what is there not of raw hide that is not British? If his wife has a gown, ten to one it is made at Manchester; the camp-kettle in which he cooks his food, the earthenware he eats from, the knife, his poncho, spurs, bit, all are imported from England.
I am tempted here to go further, and to ask, who enables him to purchase those articles? who buys his master's hides, and enables that master to employ and pay him? who but the foreign trader? Stop the trade with foreign nations, and how long would it be ere the gaucho would be reduced to the state of the Indian of the pampas, fed on his beef and horse-flesh, and clothed in the skins of wild beasts? I put the question to those people in Buenos Ayres, for there are still some such there, who continue to look with jealousy on foreigners, and would fain have the lower orders believe that the country has been ruined since they were allowed freely to come amongst them.