m
would be a public scandal throughout civilization; it would cause a
wide-spread and profound shock to the sense of security in national
obligations the world over, besides incalculable injustice and
individual distress.

But the fact was that these were the bonds of the Spanish nation,
issued by the Spanish nation for its own purposes, guaranteed in terms
"by the faith of the Spanish nation," and with another guaranty
pledging Spanish sovereignty and control over certain colonial
revenues. Spain failed to maintain her title to the security she had
pledged, but the lenders knew the instability of that security when
they risked their money on it. All the later lenders and many of the
early ones knew, also, that it was pledged for money to continue
Spain's efforts to subdue a people struggling to free themselves from
Spanish rule. They may have said the morality or justice of the use
made of the money was no concern of theirs. They may have thought the
security doubtful, and still relied on the broad guaranty of the
Spanish nation. At any rate, caveat emptor! The one thing they ought
not to have relied upon was that the island they were furnishing money
to subdue, if it gained its freedom, would turn around and insist on
reimbursing them!

The Spanish contention that it was in their power, as absolute
sovereign of the struggling island, to fasten ineradicably upon it, for
their own hostile purposes, unlimited claims to its future revenues,
would lead to extraordinary results. Under that doctrine, any
hard-pushed oppressor would have a certain means of subduing the most
righteous revolt and condemning a colony to perpetual subjugation. He
would only have to load it with bonds, issued for his own purposes,
beyond any possible capacity it could ever have for payment. Under that
load it could neither sustain itself independently, even if successful
in war, nor persuade any other Power to accept responsibility for and
control over it. It would be rendered impotent either for freedom or
for any change of sovereignty. To ask the Nation sprung from the
successful revolt of the thirteen colonies to acknowledge and act on an
immoral doctrine like that, was, indeed, ingenuous--or audacious. The
American Commissioners pronounced it alike repugnant to common sense
and menacing to liberty and civilization. The Spanish Commissioners
resented the characterization, but it is believed that the considerate
judgment of the world will yet