The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1873-02-08

| Prospect OF but Partial Success.
The books of subscription to the new five
per cent loan of the United States closed last
| evening, with the expiration of the advertised
limit of four days. The transaction, which
was entirely under the auspices and control of
the double combination of American and
foreign bankers, known ''generically" as the
Syndicate, appears, according to tho advices
80 far received to have been less Of q success
than Mr.. Boutwell, and the Syndicate ex-
pected it to prove The extent of the sub
scriptions is not as yet even approximately
known but there seems to be little doubt that
they will fall short of the three hundred
millions. It would have been more gratifying
to learn that within these four days the sub
scriptions had been sufficient to enable us to
exchange of-hand three hundred millions Of
five per cents for an equal amount of six per
cents but the complete substitution is only o
matter, doubtless, of q few months, as the
pride and amour propre of the financial aristo-
Gratis of the Syndicate will impel them to
make their enterprise an eventual success.
The terms Of the contract with tho Syndicate
required them to take and pay for only ten
millions, but gave them the privilege of ''call-
ing" for the rest of the bonds at par, in gold,
less the agreed upon commissions, until the
LIST of December next, by which date the
whole amount will doubtless be negotiated.
Following up the supposition that the
entire amount of the loan has not
been placed by the Syndicate in the
present effort, and remembering that
the negotiation was practically confined
to the European market, we cannot help re-
calling the success last Summer of the French
loan of seven hundred millions of dollars, for
which the subscriptions throughout Europs
amounted to eight billion four hundred mil
lion dollars or four times our entire national
debt. The French loan bears the same rate of
interest-fve per cent-but was sold at eighty
two per cent, so that it really pays the holders
over six per cent upon their investment. Our
bonds, under the law creating them, could
not be sold at less than par The London
price of ninety-one per cent is only
a fiction, which adjusts itself in the
fact that the gold coupon is worth only ninety
one per cent in the English market. In other
words Russians Turks and Frenchmen have
gone into Lombard street and sold their paper
at heavy discount but Brother Jonathan,
like young merchant with elevated ideas
going upon Change for the first time, with an
unimpeachable belief in the validity of his
own credit has presented his sgilt-edged'
notes at five per cent, and refused to abate
jot or title from the full face thereof His
success in getting all his paper cashed mag be
incomplete at the start, but his confidence in
his own credit will stand to him in the long
run.
Meantime the question recurs whether
Congress and Mr. Boutwell, could not
have found more acceptable means of
continuing the refunding of the ma
tional debt than the agency of the Syn
dictate, the infallibility of which for such
purpose in view Of the above facts, promises
to be seriously impaired in public estimation.
Moreover, are there not lessons enough in the
French loan, in the current quotations of
British consols and in the general range of
monetary matters capable of suggesting a
higher standard of financial craftsmanship to
our Washington legislatorsp