I suggest to you
a thought on this subject.
The debts due before the war ought to be distinguished from the debts
contracted since, and all and every mode of payment and remittance under
which they might have been discharged at the time they were contracted,
ought to accompany those debts so long as any of them shall continue
unpaid, because the circumstances of payment became united with the
debt, and cannot be separated by subsequent acts of one side only. If
this was taken up in America, and insisted on as a right coeval
with, and inseparable from those debts, it would force some of the
restrictions here to give way. While writing this, I am informed that
the minister has had a conference with some of the American creditors,
and proposed to them to assume the debts, and give them ten shillings
in the pound. The conjecture is, that he means, when the new Congress
is established, to demand the payment. If you are writing to General
Washington, it may not be amiss to mention this, and if I hear further
on this matter, I will inform you. But as, being a money matter, it
cannot come forward but through parliament; there will be notice given
of the business.
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