precious metals to three per cent had caused immense amounts of treasure to leave the country.[1]
The first foreign loan was contracted with Goldschmidt in 1823 for the sum of £3,200,000, which represented $16,000,000, and in the following year another for a similar sum was concluded with Barclay, Herring, Richardson, and Company. The loss on these loans was enormous.[2] At the end of December 1841, the indebtedness for the principal, with arrears of interest and unpaid dividends, amounted to $49,277,557. Having found it impossible to meet the liabilities agreed upon, an understanding was arrived at with the London bond-holders, which was ratified on the 1st of June, 1839, to fund the whole debt, and new bonds were then issued.[3] Nevertheless, the same difficulties existed in the future, and Mexico was unable to pay the dividends with punctuality, to say nothing of the redemption of her bonds; and the amount of her foreign indebtedness increased rapidly by the accumulation of arrears. Under another adjustment, made in 1850 with the bond-holders, Mexico recognized £10,241,650, and the interest was reduced from five per cent to three per cent.[4] For the payment of the new stock, a considerable portion of the revenue from customs was pledged.[5] For a
- ↑ The result was the adoption of endless changes and modifications, which disturbed business without doing the treasury any benefit.
- ↑ Out of the $32,000,000, the Mexican govt only received $11,197,868. The latter lost $2,244,542 by the failure of Barclay, Herring, Richardson, and Company. Alaman, Liquid. Gen. Denda Exter., 92-3.
- ↑ The new bonds were made payable on October 1, 1866, and on October 1, 1876, at 5 and 6 per cent interest, for the payment of which one sixth of the customs at Vera Cruz and Santa Anna de Tamaulipas was set apart. And for greater security 100,000,000 acres of land in the Californias, Chihuahua, New Mexico, Sonora, and Texas were hypothecated. The lands could be purchased with the bonds, but no one cared to buy lands in Mexico. Arrillaga, Recop., 1839, 125–27; Rosa, Ensayo, 33.
- ↑ The bond-holders agreed to this on Mexico giving them a craft for $2,500,000 on the indemnity due by the U.S. The arrears of dividends were considered as paid up. The bond-holders sacrificed nearly $27,000,000. By a previous compromise in 1846, they sacrificed $18,500,000. Mexican National Debt, 6.
- ↑ Twenty-five per cent of the import duties of the maritime and frontier custom-houses, 75 per cent of the export duties in the ports of the Pacific, and 5 per cent of those on the gulf of Mexico. For the first six years the
