SPANISH LOANS. 185 



Such were the final results of the first financial operations between 

 Ardoin, Hubard, and Co., and Spain Constitutional. Notwithstanding 

 the denunciations of their unequalled iniquities by the Conde Toreno 

 and the finance committee of which he was the reporter, a second loan 

 (being loan the fourth of the Cortes) was concluded with the same 

 firm, and what is more strange, though not perhaps inexplicable, upon 

 the strong recommendation and through the active intromission of the 

 Conde Toreno himself a fact which our author does not allude to, 

 from an evident tenderness for certain names. Our limits will not 

 allow more than a cursory review of this and the remaining prodigies 

 of financial prodigality, from the great detail into which we have 

 already entered of the last transaction ; it may, in brief, be observed 

 of their characteristics, ab uno disce omnes. This loan and its proceeds 

 are or may be thus stated : 



Reales. 



The loan was contracted Oct. 1 , 1 822 ; the interest, 

 5 per cent, however, to commence from the 1st of 

 May of the same year (six months beforehand}. Com- 

 mission 4 per cent, and price 60. Nominal capital . 348,000,000 

 The amount which the government should have re- 

 ceived was therefore no more than 192,000,000 



But the " payment of the proceeds was effected part 

 only in money ; part was paid in dividends of former 

 loans, and creances upon the treasury, worth at 

 Madrid only six or seven per cent, but which never- 

 theless were paid in as money at their nominal value.'* 

 The amount of these is estimated at 8 1 ,000,000 reales. 

 The actual money received is assumed at the utmost 



to be 110,000,000 



an amount, adds our author, "some tens of millions above the truth.'* 

 The provident government, therefore, netted less than 30 instead of 

 55 per cent. The further enormous gains of the contractors may be 

 guessed at from the fact, that the bonds of this, as well as the former 

 loans, rose in the London money market to between 70 and 80 from 

 56, the contract price. 



The FIFTH LOAN, or that of Bernales and Nephew of London, broke 

 down, and eventually^ ruined the unlucky projectors, a house of un- 

 doubted capital, and much higher pretensions than the French entre- 

 preneurs. An eager desire to share with foreigners the plunder of their 

 unhappy country, and the apparently fathomless stores of the London 

 Stock Exchange, had tempted these unfortunate Spanish merchants to 

 abandon the more honourable but less flashy pursuits of commerce, to 

 fish in the golden stream, where at once they made shipwreck on 

 shoals and quicksands, where only knaves and usurers could navigate 

 with safety. The SIXTH LOAN, for 291,000,000 reales, which produced 



lions sterling, would have been reconverted and exchanged for royal bonds, 

 and sold for several millions more clear gain, and there would have been 

 two kinds of stock current in the market, viz. the Cortes 5 per cent, and the 

 royal 5 per cent., both representing the same Dutch loan redeemed. 

 "M.M. No. 8. 2 A 



