The completion of the loan was an affair so perfectly
facile that it scarcely gave an occasion for a remark in the process, and it affords none in the record.. The City gentlemen were punctual to the hour appointed at the Treasury ; and the conversation was very brief. Baron Lionel de Rothschild handed in a sealed ten- der, in which he offered to supply the loan at a rate equivalent to a price between 921 and 92i-, : Government offered the loan at 93 ; and it was accepted at once. In fact, Baron Lionel de Rothschild had 4,000,0001. of cash in hand as deposits on the loan ; so it is clear that if the contract had not been taken then and there, the Government terms would. have been accepted if the Chancellor of the Exchequer had walked into the open mar- ket. The perfect publicity whieh has attended the whole of the proceedings constituted the bargain nothing more than a process to ascertain facts ; and the Treasury and the City had come very near in their definition of the facts.
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