same time from the trustees at £50 and 104 francs per bond respectively.
Mr. L---- had contracted to pay for these bonds and they had been issued
to him at the prices of £75 and 104 francs respectively, and the
remission in the price therefore amounted to a gift to him of £173,570
... out of this portion of the loan of 1869, and the loan of 1870, Mr.
L----has received in cash, or by the remission of his contracts,
£955,398."

It is little wonder that Honduras has been in default on these loans
ever since. In its Report the Committee commented severely on the action
of Don C---- G----, the London representative of the Republic. "He
sanctioned," it says, "Stock Exchange dealings and speculations in the
loans which no Minister should have sanctioned. He was a party to the
purchase of the mahogany cargoes, and permitted the public to be misled
by the announcements in relation to them. By express contract he
authorized the 'additional drawings.' He assisted Mr. L---- to
appropriate to himself large sums out of the proceeds of the loans to
which he was not entitled." Very likely he had not a notion as to what
the whole thing meant, and only thought that he was doing his best to
finance his country along the road to wealth. But the fact remains that
by these actions he made his Government a party to the proceedings that
were so unfortunate for it and so ruinous to the holders of its bonds.

After its examination of these and other less sensational but equally
disastrous issues the Committee made various recommendations, chiefly in
the direction of greater publicity in prospectuses, and ended by
expressing their conviction that "the best security against the
recurrence of such evils as they have above described will be found,
not so much in legislative enactments, as in the enlightenment of the
public as to their real nature and origin."