Baron von Beust has addressed a letter to the Austrian
Ambas- sador in London defending the coupon tax on Austrian Consols, intended avowedly for the benefit of London, "that great barometer of the monetary fluctuations of the world." He pleads, first, that he could not help himself, as the agreement with Hungary had diminished his resources, and that the alternatives were this tax, or formal repudiation, or a new loan to pay interest. Mr. Gladstone, he argues, has condemned such loans, formal repudiation would have injured creditors, and he therefore chose the tax, which he says explicitly is to be "temporary." Secondly, he says bondholders have had Austrian bonds at a price which makes them very profitable, and if they wanted absolute security they should have bought Dutch Rentes or English Console. The latter argument is silly as well as cynical, a man's right to the goods he pays for not being affected by their price ; but the former amounts very nearly to a frank confession of bankruptcy. If it had been quite frank, and the sentence about time had been a little more like a pledge, Austria would have been forgiven by all the Bourses, which indeed are already giving more for her stocks. Vienna intends to be honest, we believe, but the Hapsburgs should not have set a precedent less stolidly honest poeple will improve on.
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