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This payment, with that received on account of the Hartmont bonds, and with the higher customs receipts due to quiet conditions, afforded relief to the treasury; while peace brought the country a prosperity further increased by the immigration of numerous Cubans driven from their homes by the ten years' war that had begun in 1869.
Hartmont & Co., a firm of London bankers, agreed to issue bonds of the Republic to the amount of L757,700, though at a ruinous rate, and actually paid over L38,095.
The object of the second issue was to retire the Hartmont bonds at 20 per cent, to pay a number of floating interior debts the owners of which were harassing the government, and to provide cash for the treasury, principally for military and naval expenditures, while the third issue was designed to secure funds for the construction of a railroad between Puerto Plata and Santiago.
In the ten years of anarchy that followed in Santo Domingo no attempt was made to straighten out the matter. The bonds having gone into default in 1872 dropped lower and lower until they reached 3 per cent in 1878. The setback received by the credit of the Republic by reason of the defaulted Hartmont bonds made further bond issues impossible for a number of years.
Reduced to American money the nominal amount of the loan was $3,788,500; of this amount the Republic was to receive but $1,600,000; yet it contracted to pay as interest and sinking fund in twenty-five years a sum amounting to $7,362,500. The contractors for the loan, Hartmont & Co., of London, were authorized to retain $500,000 as their commission.
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