Since the price of cotton in England was then 21 pence per pound it was thought here was a sufficiently wide margin to offer at least a good chance of enormous profits to the buyer of the bonds.  True “the loan was looked upon as a wild cotton speculation[1060],” but odds were so large as to induce a heavy gamblers’ plunge, for it seemed hardly conceivable that cotton could for some years go below sevenpence per pound, and even that figure would have meant profit, if the Confederacy were established.  Moreover, even though the loan was not given official recognition by the London stock exchange, the financial columns of the Times and the Economist favoured it and the subscriptions were so prompt and so heavy that in two days the loan was reported as over-subscribed three times in London alone[1061].  With the closing of the subscription the bonds went up to 95-1/2.  Slidell wrote:  “It is a financial recognition of our independence, emanating from a class proverbially cautious, and little given to be influenced by sentiment or sympathy[1062].”  On Friday, March 27, the allotment took place and three days later Mason wrote, “I think I may congratulate you, therefore, on the triumphant success of our infant credit—­it shows, malgre all detraction and calumny, that cotton is king at last[1063].”

“Alas for the King!  Two days later his throne began to tremble and it took all the King’s horses and all the King’s men to keep him in state[1064].”  On April 1, the flurry of speculation had begun to falter and the loan was below par; on the second it dropped to 3-1/2 discount, and by the third the promoters and the Southern diplomats were very anxious.  They agreed that someone must be “bearing” the bonds and suspected Adams of supplying Northern funds for that purpose[1065].  Spence wrote from Liverpool in great alarm and coincidently Erlanger & Company urged that Mason should authorize the use of the receipts already secured to hold up the price of the bonds.  Mason was very reluctant to do this[1066], but finally yielded when informed of the result of an interview between Spence, Erlanger, and the latter’s chief London agent, Schroeder.  Spence had proposed a withdrawal of a part of the loan from the market as likely to have a stabilizing effect, and opposed the Erlanger plan of using the funds already in hand.  But Schroeder coolly informed him that if the Confederate representative refused to authorize the use of these funds to sustain the market, then Erlanger would regard his Company as having “completed their contract ... which was simply to issue the Loan.”  “Having issued it, they did not and do not guarantee that the public would pay up their instalments.  If the public abandon the loan, the 15 per cent sacrificed is, in point of fact, not the property of the Government at all, but the profits of Messrs. Erlanger & Co., actually in their hands, and they cannot be expected to take a worse position.  At any rate they will not do so, and unless the compact can be made on the basis we name, matters must take their course[1067].”