150-YEAR-OLD LOAN

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 822, 16 November 1929, Page 29

150 - YEAR - OLD LOAN

U.S. DEBT TO MARSEILLES The archivist of the Marseilles Chamber of Commerce has just discovered, according to the Journal of ! Paris, that the United States owes j merchants of Marseilles cC 45,000, the debt dating buck to 1773. M. Fournier, the archivist, says there is an : abundance of documentary evidence ‘ proving the claim which today may be estimated, at least, at £406,000. The circumstances in which this debt is said to have been incurred areas ! follow; j A number of Marseilles vessels f were in American ports in 1773, at j the time naval war was raging between Great Britain and France, and j be French captains, fearing conation of the money they bad received for their cargoes by the British Colonial authorities, deposited this money with American friends who would not betray them to the British. These friends conducted banks in Charleston. Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York and Boston. When the independence of the colonies was declared the money, with the consent of the Marseilles merchants, was transferred as a loan to the State banks to be drawn upon ; by the Treasury of “the United States I of Columbia.” | After the independence of the ; States was recognised by the Treaty I of Paris in 1753 the Marseilles mert chants attempted to recover their j loan, but their request was ignored, j The correspondence in tlie archives jof the Marseilles Chamber of Com- ! merce is said to show that in 1793; the interest was paid, but since then,! 1 not a cent of cither principal or in- ; : terest. The descendants of the Marseilles 1 merchants interested have formed an organisation and hired legal experts to devise ways and means by which : , the uioiiej* may bo recovered.