The case of Dr. Bowring was equally memorable. The sum of £25,000 had been allotted to this gentleman, and his horror and alarm may be conceived when he saw it decline to a discount of eighteen per cent. The doctor was very vehement in his applications. He represented his great services; he worried the unhappy deputies; he placed his cause before them in such vivid colors, that the stock, which had fallen to eighteen per cent., was taken off his hands at only ten per cent. loss. When it rose to par, he imitated his illustrious fellow-laborer, and applied to have it returned. He was reminded that he had parted with his stock; but the doctor, blessed with a short memory, professed to have forgotten the very circumstance which it had cost him an agony to compass. The letters of Dr. Bowring were somewhat naïve. “I am still the holder of a considerable sum, and I hope we shall see the loan rise to a good price for the benefit of every body.” “As the difference to me is a serious one, and to the Greek government of little importance, I hope you will oblige me by allowing the return of the £25,000 scrip.”
There were statements and counter-statements in the journals; there were pleadings and special pleadings in the magazines; there were eloquent papers in the Westminster Review, to prove it was all right; and there were powerful articles in the Quarterly, to prove it was all wrong. “The economical Mr. Hume’s over-anxiety for scrip,” said the latter, “the erudite Mr. Bowring’s various translations of stock, the romantic partiality displayed for per cents by Orlando, have been sufficiently discussed. Public opinion is quite made up in all these details; and when the sacred cause of insurrection all over the world shall again need a loan, the suffering patriots may allow such statesmen to plead their cause, to clamor about their wrongs, to weep over their miseries, to dabble in metaphysical, poetical, and periodical departments, provided they do not meddle with the pecuniary.”
A poem was extensively circulated, in ridicule of the affair, and with an extract, the present account of the Greek loan is concluded:—
“O, when the bubble burst, ’t were sweet to mark
How cash and cant roared in alternate bark!
Here, ‘Missolonghi’s fall the spirit shocks’;
There, ‘Were that all,—but, O, the price of stocks!’
Here, ‘Brimful now is misery’s fatal cup,
The Turks have blown another fortress up!’
There, ‘Forts blown up? I’ve heavier news to tell;