No. 37.
Mr. Delaplaine to Mr. Blaine.
Vienna, May 23, 1881. (Received June 11.)
Sir: In pursuance of a law passed by both houses of the Hungarian Diet, and sanctioned by the Crown, for the conversion of the Hungarian six per cent. gold loan subscriptions to a new loan for the sum of 160,000,000 florins, bearing four per cent. interest, payable in gold, were opened on the 19th instant. The rate of subscription was fixed at 773/8 per cent. in gold, being at about 89 per cent. in Austrian paper money. Now it has been ascertained that more than 4,000,000,000 florins, or 10,000,000,000 francs, have been subscribed. A favorable result was certainly anticipated, but in the present case it has far exceeded the most sanguine expectations, especially when it is compared with the recently successful issue of the five per cent. loan of Austria, referred to in my No. 460.
Hungary, by reason of her less cultivated soil, more sparse population, inferior means of communication, reduced amount of capital in the country, and her greater local distance from the moneyed centers of Europe, has always been obliged hitherto to contract loans on even more disadvantageous terms than Austria. The subscriptions in Austria, Hungary, and Germany are definitely estimated at 530,000,000 and 892,000,000 florins, while those in Paris and in London declared to be respectively more than 1,600,000,000 and 1,000,000,000 florins. * * * Subscribers for small amounts are for practical, if not political, reasons specially favored.
I have, &c.,