Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 3.djvu/384

372 dragged him down was nothing less than the weight of Spanish finances. The story may be shortly told. Napoleon's wars and repudiation of every inconvenient debt threw the French mercantile class into general bankruptcy. In the want of coin to supply the demands of the Emperor and of the merchants, the Bank of France issued dangerous amounts of paper money. To support these issues specie had to be obtained; and the empire which produced specie was Spain. Spain might be forced to give up her treasures; her arrears of subsidy alone would if paid add greatly to Marbois's resources. Yet the treasures of Spain were shut in Mexico and Peru; they could be brought to Europe only under danger of capture; and a means by which ten or twenty million Mexican dollars could run the gauntlet of British cruisers and reach in safety the Bank of France was a matter of necessity to Marbois.

The ordinary business of the Treasury in discounts and contracts was conducted through a firm called the "Négociants réunis," consisting of three capitalists,—Messrs. Ouvrard, Desprez, and Vanlerberghe. Ouvrard, the most active of the three, went to Madrid; and by lending assistance to the sorely pressed Treasury and trade of Spain induced the Spanish government to give him the privilege of importing bullion from Mexico at the rate of seventy-five cents on the dollar. The risk of importation was worth twenty-five per cent on any cargo; but Ouvrard meant to