2028. DEBT (French), Speculators and.—
I am of opinion, as I always have been, that
the purchase of our debt to France by private
speculators, would have been an operation ex-tremely
injurious to our credit; and that the
consequence foreseen by our banker, that the
purchasers would have been obliged, in order
to make good their payments, to deluge the
markets of Amsterdam with American paper of
all sorts, and to sell it at any price, was a
probable one. And the more so, as we know
that the particular individuals who were en-gaged
in that speculation, possess no means of
their own adequate to the payments they would
have had to make. While we must not doubt
that these motives, together with a proper re-gard
for the credit of the United States, had
real and full weight with our bankers towards
inducing them to counterwork these private
speculations; yet, to ascribe their industry in
this business wholly to these motives, might lead
to a too great and dangerous confidence in
them. It was obviously their interest to defeat
all such speculations, because they tended to
take out of their hands, or at least to divide
with them, the profits of the great operation of
transferring the French debt to Amsterdam,
an object of first rate magnitude to them, and
on the undivided enjoyments of which they
might count, if private speculators could be
baffled. It has been a contest of dexterity and
cunning, in which our champions have obtained
the victory. The manoeuvre of opening a loan
of three millions of florins, has, on the whole,
been useful to the United States, and though
unauthorized, I think should be confirmed. The
measure proposed by the Secretary of the Treas-ury,
of sending a superintendent of their future
operations, will effectually prevent their doing
the like again, and the funding laws leave no
danger that such an expedient might at any fu-ture
time be useful to us.—
Opinion on Foreign Debt. Washington ed. vii, 506.
Ford ed., vi, 231.
(Aug. 1790)
