19'2 . SPANlsli LOANS. 



tine, buying with the right and selling with the left hand, among 

 the families of the Shylocks and Overreaches. 



Senor Mendizabal was the financial agent, or envoy of Portugal, to 

 the money-market of this city. We are told of the exceeding expert- 

 ness he has displayed in managing the financial affairs of that country. 

 Upon that knotty point we have an opinion, and could say something 

 if we would. We, who have heard of him in Spain, as well as else- 

 where, should lament to learn that he had sacrificed his own finan- 

 cial interests to those of Portugal, as it is recorded in Chancery he 

 did once on a time to those of his native land. It is whispered that 

 Senhor Carvalho, his chief, and late Portuguese Chancellor of the 

 Exchequer, has arranged his to admiration, and now enjoys the 

 blessed otium with sufficient splendour, if not dignity. What may 

 be briefly told of Portuguese finance is, that for payment of interest 

 or principal of the Carvalho loans, not one cento of reis has, to this 

 hour, been remitted from Portugal ; gold has been shipped from 

 hence, and, bulk unbroken, re-shipped from the Tagus, for the 

 Thames, for payment of dividends we know; such gold being the 

 produce of a loan raised here for the stated purpose of redeeming 

 some floating old paper rags in Portugal, and not so applied ; 

 being really intended for dividends falling due in London, in the 

 teeth as is alleged of obligations incurred with the public, in the 

 formalized provisions of former loans against the contract of new 

 ones within a specified period, and without the fulfilment of special 

 conditions. If financial management be measured by its cost, then 

 should the Portuguese nation rank high the talent of Carvalho and 

 his coadjutors if any he had : nay, they should make them a calf 

 of molten gold in his honour, although dearly have they paid already 

 in commissions, shipping and re-shipping charges, insurances and 

 exchanges, for a knowledge of the science of management and mys- 

 tification. The conversion of the six per cents, out of the last three 

 per cent, loan, with the solid disposable residuum, is only a more 

 finished process of the same manufacture, adapted for future contin- 

 gencies of quarterly concern. 



Flourishing, however, are the accounts from Lisbon. Convents 

 are abolished, monasteries suppressed, estates confiscated, and na- 

 tional domains put up to sale. All these vast properties are fetching, 

 we are gravely told, 100 per cent, beyond the taxed price, and 

 enough, aye, more than enough, will be realized to redeem the 

 whole debt of the state. The Cortes of Spain confiscated, and sold, 

 and published, the very same thing in 1822 and 1823 ; but somehow 

 the proceeds never reached the pockets, or more properly, the ex- 

 chequer of the state ; for Spanish functionaries of those days had, as 

 we hope the Portuguese have not, a wonderful dexterity in inter- 

 cepting the supplies, or each severally taking toll of them. The 

 Por*uguese lesson will, no doubt, find apt scholars in Madrid, already 

 partly initiated, and we may shortly expect to hearof royal auctions, 

 at which principalities will be knocked down to capitalists, fiercely 

 contending at covering acres with dollars ; whilst monastic lands and 

 tenements, in the conflict of Protestant and Hebrew, must, at the 

 least, realize fifty years' purchase. That these wonders will be 



