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]."

In the face of this ultimatum, Spence advised yielding as he "could not
hesitate ... seeing that nothing could be so disastrous politically, as
well as financially, as the public break-down of the Loan[1068]." Mason
gave the required authorization and this was later approved from
Richmond. For a time the "bulling" of the loan was successful, but again
and again required the use of funds received from actual sales of bonds
and in the end the loan netted very little to the Confederacy. Some
$6,000,000 was squandered in supporting the market and from the entire
operation it is estimated that less than $7,000,000 was realized by the
Confederacy, although, as stated by the _Economist_, over $12,000,000 of
the bonds were outstanding and largely in the hands of British investors
at the end of the war[1069].

The loan soon became, not as had been hoped and prophesied by Slidell,
a source of valuable public support, but rather a mere barometer of
Southern fortunes[1070]. From first to last the Confederate Cotton Loan
bore to subscribers the aspect of a speculative venture and lacked the
regard attached to sound investment. This fact in itself denied to the
loan any such favourable influence,