Transcript: Pierre César Labouchère, Hope & Co to Alexander Baring, son of Sir Francis, the senior partner of Barings, about the arrangements for the Louisiana loan.
30 January
I reply, my dear Alexander, to your letter 19 instant by Samuel without having as yet maturely considered, how to forward to you my letter. I think I perfectly understand the subject you treat upon; it is of the utmost magnitude and importance, might stagger us in ordinary times, and in the present would hardly attract the serious attentions of many, but much and long as I have been a sceptic respecting the permanency of the present order of things, I feel strong inducements to vary the grounds of my opinion and to consider with you less what is than what may be. Thus the operation appears to me in a double point of view, and which induces me to blend the whole in laying it before our London friends for their acceptance or refusal.
In an affair of the description of the present we can trust in Paris house. What our means connected with those of a few powerful friends can enable us to do, is impossible to my friends’ house, they may undertake on cheaper and more alluring terms, but must … themselves and the cause they mean to serve. Money is scarce and will become more so. Debts of states are increasing and must …, all this is fatal to private credit, and to operations depending upon it.
Our first object at present must be to place our Portugal operation in such a train as to render us perfectly easy, and which I am pretty well satisfied will be the case in the course of the present year, provided political events do not take an untoward turn. The only cloud I perceive distinctly is the difference between England and Spain concerning the cutting of wood in the Bay of Honduras. I should not be surprised if France were to blow the coals and afterwards make Spain pay the price of her action.
The Baring Archive Reference NP1.A4.03