Kossuth was not an economist, and the republican government's upper ranks likewise lacked anyone with a head for economics. They had never once considered what 200 million forints meant to Hungary!
Their ignorance did not mean that everyone present was equally ignorant. Howell, the representative of the banking consortium, questioned him directly: "Mr. Kossuth, do you know what 200 million forints means?"
The question left Kossuth dumbfounded. He had expected these great aristocrats and capitalists to haggle, but he had not expected them to ask such a question.
By currency value, one forint was worth roughly 11.69 grams of silver. Two hundred million forints meant 46.76 million taels of silver. Silver had not yet depreciated in this era, and converted into pounds sterling, that was more than twenty million pounds. (Gold-to-silver ratio: roughly 1:10.)
Austria's fiscal revenue in 1847 had been only 155 million forints, excluding Hungary, while Britain's fiscal revenue had been only a little over fifty million pounds.
Before the revolution, Hungary would have been doing well to collect 100 million forints in fiscal revenue. Yet after the republican government was established, it had already spent wealth worth 100 million forints.
Most of that money had come from selling off large amounts of state-owned assets at bargain prices, along with taxes levied by the government. (The Emperor's property and property owned collectively by the people.)
No one had raised this issue before because they were all vested interests. Who would turn down money delivered right to their doorstep when they could buy industries cheaply?
Not knowing was no problem. The first essential quality of a politician was a thick skin. If one still cared about saving face, one should not become a politician—especially not a politician in a republican state.
"Of course, 200 million forints is indeed a