§ Mr. Humesaid, that his object was, to ask for information on the early part of this transaction. He could not believe that his majesty's government had come to a resolution respecting so large a sum of money, and to pay so large a discount, without some written proposal having been made. The House had had laid on their table the answer to the proposal of the contractors for the payment of 2,500,000l.; but he supposed this proposal must have been written as well as the answer. The document, therefore, which he wished to have laid before the House was, a copy of the contractor's proposal. It was not customary for the Treasury to give written answers to verbal offers. The contractors and the emperor of Austria were both parties to this negotiation. The emperor either made us an offer to pay 2,500,000l. or he did not. If he had made an offer to pay us 2,500,000l. why did we accept of 90,000l. less? The fact was, and this should have been stated in the treaty, that it was to pay us a sum less by 90,000l. than 2,500,000l. The hon. gentleman then moved, "That there be laid before this House a copy of the proposal of Messrs. Reid, Irving, and Co. Baring, Brothers, and Co. and N. M. Rothschild, esq. for paying the sum of 2,500,000l. into his majesty's Exchequer, on behalf of the Austrian government, referred to in a copy of the Treasury minute, dated 12th Oct. 1823, on the table of the House."
The Chancellor of the Exchequersaid, he had flattered himself that recent discussions had satisfied the mind of the hon. gentleman, that nothing had taken place in the transaction in question of a secret or objectionable nature; and he still hoped that what had been already said was satisfactory to the House generally. If the hon. gentleman wanted a precedent for the transaction, he could not gratify him; for upon consulting the records of the Treasury, he had not been able to find any relating to a matter of at all a similar character. The hon. gentleman did not seem to understand this business, which had proceeded briefly thus: The Austrian government had proposed to give us a certain amount of Austrian stock: but that would have been a most unsatisfactory mode of settlement; for if this government had taken stock, they must have gone into the market with it. What they could have done in that case, he really did not understand, though he had no doubt they would have made but an indifferent bargain. This government would have been liable upon its sales to all the fluctuations to which the stocks were exposed. It was therefore thought the better plan to ascertain in what mariner they could get at some money instead. The Austrian government agreed to this proposition; but, having no means of raising the requisite amount of money within their own territories, they employed certain capitalists in this country. This government then desired to know what money those capitalists could afford to give for this stock; and it was perfectly true, that in the beginning of the transaction, and before an offer was finally made, some written communications had passed between the contractors and the Treasury. The contractors, at length, on behalf of Austria, produced their ultimatum; and it had seemed to government much better to take what was offered than to say "If we cannot have all we want, we will have nothing." He really thought there was no necessity for producing all those written documents that, in a preliminary stage of the business, might have passed on this subject between government and the contractors; and not conceiving that the slightest blame could possibly attach to government for its share in the transaction, he could not feel himself justified in acceding to the motion.
§ Mr. Humestill thought, that if such a paper as he smoke of was in existence, 499 the government ought to produce it. What he complained of was, that with this stock in their hands, they had not gone to the Bank or Exchange, and asked how much the public would give them for it. This was the usual practice. Government ought to have proceeded as it would with a loan; and to have said, "We have got 30,000,000 of florins, or whatever the sum was, in Austrian stock; who will give us most for it?" The chancellor of the Exchequer was not warranted in considering the supposed amount of two millions and a half, equal to that specific sum of money; or in granting the contractors a discount of 5 per cent, when money was at 4 per cent, and even less, all over the country.
Mr. Baringwished to furnish that information which his hon. friend seemed not to be in possession of. Undoubtedly, the offer alluded to did not exist as a document. There was no written papers of the kind. It was, on the part of those gentlemen who were interested with him (Mr. Baring}, a specific proposal, in which the Treasury had finally acquiesced. After considerable discussions about the terms of payment, before the offer was made, it was at last made verbally, not by himself, but by one of the parties. Therefore no such paper existed. In the first place he would observe, that he fully concurred with the hon. gentleman in that general principle which he (Mr. B.) had so often advocated; namely, that transactions of this kind should be public. But, in the present case, there was no public operation to be performed, because the Austrian minister of Finance had made up his mind to give only a certain amount of stock and the government of this country determined to accept it. In the next place, the Austrian bankers at Vienna became, in the meanwhile, mixed up with the transction. They had granted a loan themselves to their government, and it was understood there should be no other without their consent. They therefore necessarily became parties to the transaction, and nothing could be done without their consent. Their government, again, could not send their stock here, through any other channel but the English government; nor would it have been decent in the latter, under the circumstances, to treat that stock in the public way that would have been then requisite. The Contractors saw lord Liverpool and the chancellor of the Exchequer in the first 500 instance; and the transaction became, in its completion, merely a verbal one.
Mr. Maberlyconceived, that the objection of his hon. friend was directed rather against the principle of contracting loans in secret, than against the actual terms that had been obtained. The recovery of the loan itself was, as the chancellor of the Exchequer had well described it, a God send, for the emperor of Austria might in fairness have got rid of the whole thing, in consequence of the negligence of our government in omitting to press the claim. He thought, with the secretary of state for the foreign department, that the emperor of Austria might have got rid, with fairness and justice, even of the payment which he had now consented to make. At the treaty of Paris, the emperor had transferred to another power his dominions in the Netherlands, for the defence of which dominions this loan had been contracted. He had, therefore, a right to say to the government of this country, "I have parted with the Netherlands, and the debt which I contracted for them must go along with the ceded provinces." In not using that language, the emperor of Austria had acted like a man of the highest honour.
Mr. Secretary Canning,after repeating his former eulogium on the honourable conduct of the emperor of Austria throughout the whole of this transaction, proceeded to show that the motion of the hon. member for Aberdeen was founded on a mistake. That hon. member seemed to imagine, that the British government had been in possession of the stock before there had been any intervention of the British bankers, and that it could therefore have gone into the market, and asked who would give the most money for the stock it had obtained. Now, this had never been the case. The Austrian government had wished to pay in a quantity of stock, and the British government to get paid in a determinate sum of money. When this became evident to the Austrian government, it became a question with Austria, how she should change her stock into money; and the money question in the first case arose with the Austrian bankers. It was not until the English houses had placed themselves in the situation of representatives of the emperor of Austria that any negotiation had been commenced with them by the British government, and during no part of that negotiation had 501 they ever been considered as parties proposing to advance a loan to it. The point of information, therefore, at which the hon. member wished to arrive, was founded upon an assumption of facts that never had any existence.
Mr. Hobhouseasked a question relative to the nett amount that was to be paid into the Exchequer on account of this loan.
The Chancellor of the Exchequerreplied, that the nett amount would be about 2,200,000l., owing to some percentages to be paid on it.
§ Mr. Jamescomplained, that the money so long kept back by Austria should be so much diminished as it must be by the percentage allowed to the contractors.
§ The motion was negatived.