190 SPANISH LOANS. 



now no more than heretofore, but go to make or to swell the fortunes 

 of needy patriots and intriguing schemers, with usurious capitalists 

 behind the curtain, grasping all, and leaving their dupes, the public, 

 with the waste-paper securities. 



The debt, foreign and domestic, of Spain, may be 



estimated at . . . . . 150,000,000 



Reales Vellon. 



The Conde Toreno himself states the expenditure at 957,460,000 

 The revenue 766,804,000 



Annual deficit . . 190,656,000 



Or about in sterling 2,000,000 



Assuming the whole debt to bear interest at the rate 



of 2J per cent, only, we shall have . . . 3,750,000 



An annual deficit of . . 5,750,000 



That is to say, the annual deficit nearly equals in amount the 

 whole of the revenue, as that is stated by the Conde Toreno himself. 

 But taking into account that he has overstated the revenue by one 

 hundred millions of reales, and understated the expenditure by at 

 least an equal sum, as we could readily prove from indisputable au- 

 thorities, but for the inadmissible length to which it would carry this 

 article ; reckoning also the charges of interest upon the loan of 

 700,000,000 of reales contracted in the last November, and now on 

 the money market, together with other loans and obligations since 

 contracted and being contracted, of which the bondholders rest in a 

 happy state of unconsciousness ; taking all these together, we repeat, 

 there can be no question that the annual deficit exceeds considerably 

 the whole of the annual income of Spain. We have assumed the in- 

 terest upon the debt at 2J per cent, only in this calculation; but, 

 although the rates vary upon the different loans, and especially as 

 between the foreign and domestic portions, we have little doubt that 

 the average would be found higher than we have chosen to calculate 

 it. The budget of Toreno for 1836 will, or we shall be mistaken, 

 afford many contradictions to that for 1835. 



Re that as it may, a debt of ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTT MILLIONS 

 STERLING, with an annual deficit superior in amount to the whole of 

 the revenue, present grave matter for the cogitation of all concerned. 

 Zealous friends as we are to the Christino cause and the cause of 

 liberal institutions for Spain, we cannot afford to violate conscience 

 by advocating the wholesale plunder of our fellow-subjects as the 

 means to that end. Spanish loans have heretofore, as we fear to 

 think they will again, proved the irremediable ruin of thousands of 

 our countrymen ; to Spain they have produced nothing but beggary 

 and bankruptcy; contractors, jobbers, and unprincipled capitalists; 

 nothing possessing or nothing risking, are alone the parties to benefit; 

 these gorge themselves to repletion at the expense of their unsus- 

 pecting victims, the people, whom they flatter and fawn on tlie 



