186 SPANISH LOANS. 



only 61,435,525, was undertaken by Messrs. Campbell and Sabbock on 

 Commission. It was concluded on the 6th of July, 1823, signed, if 

 we recollect aright, when king Ferdinand was in durance at Seville, 

 having been actually deposed from the throne by the Cortes when on 

 their flight to Cadiz, and in so far entirely invalid. Its avowed object 

 was to take up the dishonoured Bills accepted by Bernales and Nephew 

 for account of the State. The Bonds were disposed of, as we have 

 heard, so low as even 17 or 18 per cent, to the last moment of the 

 existence of the Cortes and of any marketable demand for them. For 

 this, as being a Commission Loan, no blame is imputable to the agents, 

 who acted only according to orders. But a serious question does arise, 

 upon which no explanation has been given to or sought by the Bond- 

 holder that we know of, viz. who were the depositaries of the disgraced 

 Bills, thus to be redeemed in full at the expense of the public ? To 

 place the subject in a more tangible point of view, were or were not 

 those Bills in the hands of English holders, remitted to them by their 

 correspondents in Spain, who might have been unable or unwilling to 

 refund them if returned with all notarial charges and the costs of ex- 

 change and re-exchange upon them ? Nothing short of the production 

 of the Bills themselves can solve this mystery, and this the creditors 

 have an undoubted right to expect, in order to the clearing up of a 

 transaction of very doubtful morality in many points of view. This 

 Loan closes the financial career of the Cortes coevally with that of its 

 destructive political existence : happy for Spain and England had the 

 catalogue of mischiefs it perpetrated closed even here ; but we see the 

 same men and essentially the same body repossessed of power and pre- 

 paring to run over again the same courses, careless of the past and 

 reckless of the future. 



Six were the Cortes Loans ; six were likewise the Royal Loans of 

 that government of the absolute Ferdinand which succeeded. We 

 shall not attempt any detail of them, because they present no more than 

 a disgusting repetition, though upon a more moderate and less disho- 

 nourable scale, of the frauds, the conversions, and the hocus pocus 

 already exposed of their Constitutional exemplars. The people who 

 appeared as Contractors of the first, for 334,000,000 reales are, one 

 Marquis de Croy, who, some year and a half ago, figures before the 

 tribunal of Correctional Police at Paris on charges of making or altering 

 certain pieces of paper, not Spanish bonds but imitation Bank notes ; 

 and who may be seen either at St. Pelagie or elsewhere, imprisoned at 

 this moment, we believe, either for that or other escroqueries ; the 

 Compte de Croy, his brother we suppose, was a Co-contractor, with 

 Messrs. Guebbard and Co., company of banquiers de Paris, and other 

 worthies. Although the Loan did not succeed for the government, it 

 did for the confederates, who one and all achieved fortunes, which some 

 of them could not keep ; so true it is, that money obtained lightly often 

 doth make itself wings and fly away. The remainder of the Loan not 

 negociated was entrusted to Senor Aquado, then a petty wine-dealer, 

 to commence in which humble though honest calling he was indebted, 

 it is said, to the bounty of a friend for the loan of 10,000 francs (400 

 of our money) ; although now, since March 1824, the date of his first 

 contract, and in less than ten years, Senor Aquado was accounted a 



