10 
Indiana University 
1786, 1787, and 1788 remained only one-half of what it had 
been in 1784,"^ while the exports from the Netherlands to the i 
United States continued to increase. After this, Americans ! 
were compelled for some time to send specie to England to get j 
the goods. Vessels at the worst of this period returned from 
England in ballast because they could not get the goods with- 
out specie. The Dutch certainly had the capital to give the credit 
if they wanted to. There was in the Netherlands at that time 
an enormous amount of wealth. Loans were being floated 
there by the English, Russian, Danish, French, and Spanish 
governments as well as by the American government. In the 
twelve years from 1781 to 1793 Dutch bankers floated loans 
of the American government to the value of 39,450,000 florins 
or $15,780,000. Of this amount 16,000,000 florins were lent be- 
tween 1781 and 1788. The French and Spanish governments | 
had lent the government of the United States money during i 
the Revolution from purely political reasons. The Dutch cap- ! 
italists lent the American government money as a purely 
business investment at a time when our government was un- 
able to borrow a single dollar in any other country.^® By 1786 
the Dutch investors deemed the future of the American gov- 
ernment promising enough to buy up bonds to the value of 
24,000,000 livres which the French government held from 
the United States.®^ By 1788 the Dutch were speculating in 
the certificates of the American domestic debt,^^ ]jy lygg 
the credit of the American government was better in Holland 
than that of any other government. The liquidated debt of 
the American government was freely bought in Holland in 
1792 during the re-establishment of American finances.^^ 
These activities were evidence that the Dutch were in a posi- 
tion to grant credit if they chose to. Furthermore their wil- 
lingness to credit the American government is some evidence 
that they had faith in the solvency and soundness of the Amer- 
ican people back of this government. The Dutch, however, 
Timothy Pitkin, A Statistical Vietv of the Commerce of the United States (Hart- 
ford, 1816), 30. 
28 Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser, September 29, '1786. 
2“ Carey, American Museum or Reposito'ry, II, 111. 
Rafael A. Bayley, The National Loans of the United States from July 4, 1776, to 
June 30, 1880 (Washington, 1882), 16-31; Journals of the American Congress, 1774 to 
1788 (4 vols., Washington, 1823), IV, 78. 204. 
The Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States, II, 8. 
