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treasury. His faithlessness in re- be converted from a redeemable

gard to the bonds of the Cortes had already driven him from the English money market; and while his ministers were looking every where for expedients to work on the credulity of others, a fraud was discovered, deliberately practised by the Spanish government, which bade fair to drive it from every money market in Europe. Immediately after his restoration to absolute power in 1823, Ferdinand had raised a loan in Paris of 16,700,000 dollars of nominal capital, divided into 83,500 bonds of 200 dollars, or 1,000 francs each, at five per cent interest, redeemable annually at Madrid by twentieths. It was called, from the name of the contractor for it, the Guebhard loan. On the 15th of December, 1825, a Spanish decree was issued, authorizing the conversion of this loan into a rente perpetuelle. On the 12th of April following, a prospectus of the conditions of the conversion was published by Burgos, the Spanish agent at Paris. By that prospectus, in order to induce bondholders to agree to the conversion, an offer was made to them of an increase of five per cent on the nominal capital, and consequently on the interest. It was intimated that a stockbroker, selected by Mr. Aguado, banker in Paris, charged with the conversion and sinking fund, would instantly put a stamp on the bonds redeemed, whereby they would be cancelled, and would no longer remain fit for circulation; and finally, that, at the expiration of every six months, the amount of redeemed rentes would be made publicly known. Every provision seemed thus to be made against the extension of the debt. It was to be fixed, but not increased; it was to

into an irredeemable capital, and could not tend to produce any new want of confidence in the solvency of Spain. On the faith of this decree and prospectus, the French minister of Finance, and the Syndieal Chamber of the Exchange of Paris, by an order of 27th of June 1826, allowed the quotation, in the Cours Authentique of " the Spanish rentes perpetuelles proceeding from the conversion of the royal loan of 1823." For the quotation of the conversion of any other loan there was no authority whatever.

On this footing, as all the world believed, matters had gone on. The rentes perpetuelles, created by the conversion of this loan of 1823, were regularly quoted; about 6,000,000 of francs of that loan, that is, about 6,000 of its bonds, now appeared to have been converted, and the interest was regularly paid. But, in an official statement of the different branches of the Spanish debt, published in the present year by the Spanish Treasury, it was unwarily let out, that only 274 bonds, or 274,000 francs had actually been converted. The Parisian bond-holders set themselves to inquire whence had come the other 5,726,000 of rentes perpetuelles which, it was admitted, had been created;-and the fraud was instantly detected. It turned out that there had been a Spanish decree in 1824, authorizing a loan, a decree which had been carefully concealed, and of any loan under which, nobody had ever heard. These six millions of rentes had been created by contracting a new debt under this clandestine decree, instead of converting the royal loan of 1823, which supplied only 274,000 francs of the whole.

To make the fraud practicable, the Spanish government and its agents had committed something very like forgery, and what, in every civilized country, is clearly punishable as swindling. Every one of the inscriptions of rente making up these six millions, although truly made under the clandestine decree of 1824, and creating a new debt, bore, on its face, that it was issued in virtue of the decree of December, 1825, authorizing the conversion of the loan of 1823. In short, the Spanish government said to itself, "our credit is so utterly gone, that we cannot effect an ostensible loan, either in London, Amsterdam, or Paris.

We even find it difficult to keep up, however feebly, the royal loan.

Let it be announced, then, that the rentes perpetuelles about to be issued are nothing more than the counter value of the bonds of the royal loan: let that be even specified on the inscriptions them selves. The public will fancy, that, far from burthening our credit with the weight of a new debt, we merely take away from circulation an onerous currency, to replace it by a more convenient one. The French ministry will believe in the utility of the operation, and will most certainly permit the prices of the new security to be inserted in the Cours Authentique. When once this is obtained, the business is done." No more direct fraud, no more shameless raising of money on false pretences, could well be conceived. It was an insult to the French government; for the French government had authorized the quotation only of a rente proceeding from the conversion of a known and specific loan; while Spain, under that denomination and disguise, had thrown into the market a new loan, and created

a new debt, of which Europe had never heard. To Spain herself the advantage was, that, by fraud, she had succeeded in raising money which those, whom she cheated, would never have lent, if they had thought she was borrowing. The evils were, the utter annihilation of any fragments of character or credit which might still linger about her-the burthening herself with a new debt, instead of being relieved by the merging of an already existing debt in one of a lighter kind-an increased necessity of obtaining new dupes, and cheating more extensively, with the impossibility of any longer duping even the veriest of simpletons. The Spanish treasury did not blush to assert that the" minimum of its revenues exceeded its annual expenditure;" and as, apparently, no new debt was contracted, the regular payment of the interest on the royal loan gave countenance to the representation. This, too, had been mere deception. The Spanish government had never sent a sous to Paris for the payment of interest, sinking fund, or redemp tion of the unconverted bonds. To fulfil these engagements it had just borrowed more money from the Parisians by creating a new debt, the obligations for which expressly bore that it was not a new debt at all. In this way, a new debt of 130,000,000 of francs had been secretly created, while the former, and only known debt, still remained to the extent of 65,000,000.

ITALY. His Holiness Pope Leo. XII., Hannibal della Genga, died at Rome on the 10th of February, at the age of sixty-nine, after an illness of five days. He had filled the papal chair for only

five years and a half, having been elected in September, 1823, and the brief period of his pontificate had not been characterized by any striking display of ability, or marked by any interesting occurrence. He had headed the ceremonies of a jubilee; he had increased the staff of the church by creating many bishops with real or with nominal sees, and had made a considerable number of cardinals. In his transactions with foreign powers, he had shewn a disposition to maintain and exalt the rights of his triple crown, but had always yielded to their firmness and resolution. In the Netherlands a Protestant king had successfully asserted against him his right to regulate the ecclesiastic seminaries of his Catholic subjects; in France the power of the Jesuits had been curtailed by the force of public opinion, contrary to his own expressed wishes, and the inclinations of a court, willing, in this respect, to support him; and in South America he had listened to the demands of the new republics to consecrate their bishops, although he thereby incurred the displeasure of Ferdinand, the best-beloved son of the Catholic church.

On the 23rd of February, the conclave assembled to elect a successor. After it had sat nominally for thirty-six days, its choice fell on Cardinal Francis Xavier Castiglione, who was elected on the S1st of March, by forty-eight votes out of fifty. He was a native of Cingoli; he was already sixtyeight years old, and assumed the pontifical title of Pius VIII. From the indemnity ordinarily published by a new Pope on his election, he excepted political offenders, who were compared to assassins, undeserving of the clemency of even the compassionate church; and one of the first acts of his power was laying the town of Imola under a sentence of excommunication, on account of a tumultuous attack made on the house of the archbishop of that place, the perpetrators of which the citizens had shewn no anxiety to detect. They took the sentence, however, very easily; it excited little of the alarm which would have accompanied its announcement two centuries earlier; and they patiently waited, without seeming to feel much horror or privation, till it should please the holy father to remove it.

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THE NETHERLANDS. Dissensions between the Ministry and the States General-Progress of the War in Batavia. —GERMANYBRUNSWICK. Decision of the Diet in the Quarrel between the Duke of Brunswick and the King of Hanover.

TH

nority of forty-three to fifty-six. In the discussion, however, of the individual propositions which grew

tion was more successful. A new law was passed for the regulation of the press, more liberal than the system which, during the preceding year, had excited loud complaints; but it was still very far from being satisfactory to the public mind, inasmuch as the government successfully resisted the proposal, that cases of alleged abuse of the liberty of the press should be tried by a jury. It opposed itself likewise to a motion for the introduction of grand juries, and for the extension of jury trials to the provincial courts, and other criminal tribunals; and both of these motions were lost. On the other hand, a numerous body in the Chamber

HE Session of the States General of the kingdom of the Netherlands, in the present year, was less tranquil and satis-out of these petitions, its opposifactory, than any that had been held since the Restoration. Though the king himself continued to be popular, his government had produced very general dissatisfaction by some obnoxious measures, particularly by dismissing judges who were supposed to be too obstinate, and by exercising a great degree of severity against the press, when it happened to criticise the policy of the administration When the States General assembled, the second Chamber was immediately occupied in discussing the contents of petitions, recommending improvements in the existing system of government. These petitions amounted to 150 in number, and were subscribed by great bodies of people, calling for the institution of juries, the independence of judges, the responsibility of ministers, freedom of public instruction, and the strict execution of the concordat. A motion was made to refer all these petitions to the government, backed with the sanction of the Chamber, as to their urgency and importance. This proposition was resisted by the ministers, who, on the division, were left in a mi

censured every measure of the government, and resisted every project of its ministers; and the session closed, having rather added to, than diminished, the excitement and dissatisfaction which, for some time, had been growing up in the public mind.

This dissatisfaction had partly arisen from the great expense incurred in carrying on the war in Batavia, and the ill success with which that war had hitherto been

conducted. In the present year, In the present year, however, in consequence of reinforcements having arrived from Europe, which enabled the government to act with vigour, the contest assumed a more favour

able appearance than it had borne during several preceding campaigns. The troops moved in three columns, and attacked the insurgents at different points. A series of engagements followed, which were not decisive in their character, but which generally terminated in favour of the Dutch, and enabled them to hem their adversaries more closely in. On the 2nd of May an attack was made upon Pengasse, where the rebels had stationed themselves to the number of six or seven hundred men. They waited the approach of the Dutch troops with firmness, and made a vigorous resistance, but gave way and fled, when the Dutch charged with the bayonet. Another body of them was routed, about the same time, near Sepoerang, where they lost two hundred men, with all their horses and arms. The result of these operations was, that Diepo Negoro, the insurgent leader, found himself confined within a narrow district, which supplied scarcely enough of land to raise rice for his followers. He still continued, however, to keep his men together; and, while he prudently, avoided any regular action in the open field, he made sudden attacks where they were least expected, and cut off small detachments which might happen to be separated from the main body...

In a former volume we have given an account of the foolish

.• Vol. LXIX, p, 288.

quarrel in which the duke of Brunswick had thought fit to involve himself with the king of Hanover, who, as his guardian, had conducted, during his minority, the administration of his states. The duke had complained of various proceedings of the king of Hanover in that capacity; he had complained still more loudly of count Munster, who, as Hanoverian minister, had borne the principal share in these affairs, and had condescended to challenge the count to fight a duel. Above all, he had refused to recognize certain liberal alterations in the political constitution of Brunswick, which had been introduced by his royal guardian. He complained loudly, too, that the Hanoverian government had protected, and still refused to deliver up, a certain privy councillor, Schmidt Phiseldek, with whom the duke had a quarrel, and whom he wished, therefore, to punish. The king of Hanover applied to the Diet to compel the duke to make satisfaction for the insults which he had publicly heaped upon his majesty; and the states of the duchy. addressed themselves to the Diet, to be maintained in the possession of that better constitution, and those greater and more useful powers, which they had obtained from the hand of the king of Hanover, the legal representative of their prince. The duke was willing to recognize the states in their old and inefficient form, with all its accompaniments of patrimonial jurisdictions, exemption from taxes, and other franchises of the privileged classes, every one of which had been abolished, when the new constitution was introduced. The states

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