surmounting of the twelve months' notice, so as to give prompt and simultaneous effect to the whole operation. Let us consider the way in which this was successfully accomplished. The issue of a two and a half per cent., in simple exchange for a three per cent., hundred for hundred, was not deemed possible, or even, perhaps, quite a fair and reasonable offer of treatment to the public creditor. Accordingly he was to be met by the concession of a substantial discount upon the substituted two and a half per cent., but still a discount, comparatively speaking, so moderate as to leave an enormous advantage to the State by the conversion. The temptation of this discount became the efficient leverage by which the disadvantage of the twelve months' notice was obviated. The discount was allowed to those only who decided at once. This proved a generally successful argument. Indeed, only a comparatively small amount of money payment was actually demanded in the entire operation.
There are but a few more words to complete the account of the final procedure in this business. The principle adopted was, that, on the one hand, there should be a uniform two and a half per cent, stock offered to the public; and, on the other hand, a stock of terminable annuities in readiness, from the sale of which, in amounts as might happen to be required, the State was to be put in funds to pay off dissentients. The State, in short, offered the former stock on its own terms, but was compelled, of course, to accept the terms of buyers for the latter stock. It was only because the latter stock proved to be very much the lesser of the two, that the State came off the decided gainer upon the operation.
