London, April 28

A main theme of diplomatic circles here is France’s conduct on the Mexican scene. People are puzzled by the fact that Louis Bonaparte should have increased the expeditionary troops at the moment when he promised to reduce them, and that he should want to go forward whilst England draws back. Here people are well aware that the impulse for the Mexican expedition came from the Cabinet of St. James and not from that of the Tuileries. It is equally well known that Louis Bonaparte likes to carry out all his undertakings, and particularly the overseas adventures, under England’s aegis. As is known, the restored Empire has not yet emulated the feat of its original in quartering the French armies in the capital cities of modern Europe. As a pis aller,” on the other hand, it has led them to the capital cities of ancient Europe, to Constantinople, Athens and Rome, and, over and above that, even to Peking.” Should the theatrical effect of a jaunt to the capital city of the Aztecs be lost, and the opportunity for military archaeological collections a la Montauban If, however, one considers the present state of French finance and the future serious conflicts with the United States and England to which Louis Bonaparte’s actions in Mexico may lead, one is then obliged to reject without further question the foregoing interpretation of his doings which is popular with various British papers. I believe I can give you the real explanation.

At the time of the Convention of July 17, 1861," when the claims of the English creditors were to be settled, but the English

An International Affaire Mirés 197 plenipotentiary simultaneously demanded that the entire register of the Mexican debts or misdeeds should be examined, Mexico’s Foreign Minister put the debt to France at $200,000, i.e., a mere bagatelle of some £40,000. The account now drawn up by France, on the other hand, does not confine itself to these modest limits by any means.

Under the Catholic administration of Zuloaga and Miramé6n, an issue of Mexican state bonds to the amount of $14,000,000 was contracted through the Swiss banking house of J. B. Jecker and Co. The whole sum that was realised by the first issue of these bonds came to only 5 per cent of the nominal amount or to $700,000. The sum total of the bonds issued very soon fell into the hands of prominent Frenchmen, among them relatives of the Emperor and fellow string-pullers of “haute politique”? The house of Jecker and Co. let these gentlemen have the aforesaid bonds for far less than their original nominal price.

Miramon contracted this debt at a time when he was in possession of the capital city. Later, after he had come down to the role of a mere guerilla leader, he again caused state bonds to the nominal value of $38,000,000 to be issued through his so-called Finance Minister, Senor Peza-y-Peza. Once more it was the house of Jecker and Co. which negotiated the issue, but, on this occasion, it limited its advances to the modest sum of barely $500,000, or from one to two per cent to the dollar. Once more, the Swiss bankers knew how to dispose of their Mexican property as quickly as possible, and once more the bonds fell into the hands of those “prominent” Frenchmen, among whom were some habitués of the imperial court whose names will live on in the annals of the European stock exchanges as long as the affaire Mirés.

This debt, then, of $52,000,000, of which not even $4,200,000 have hitherto been advanced, the administration of President Juarez declines to recognise, on the one hand, because it knows nothing about it and, on the other hand, because it claims that Messrs. Miramén, Zuloaga and Peza-y-Peza were possessed of no constitutional authority to contract such a state debt. The abovementioned “prominent” Frenchmen, however, had to carry the was the question whether British land and sea power might be employed to support the gambling operations of certain rouge-et-noir politicians on the other side of the Channel. Accordingly, Palmerston caught eagerly at the Conference of Orizaba to withdraw from a business that threatens us with the filth of an international affaire Mirés.