2095. DEBTS DUE BRITISH, Liquidation of.—
There are two circumstances of
difficulty in the payment of these debts. To
speak of [Virginia], the particular State with
which you and I are best acquainted, we know
that its debt is ten times the amount of its circulating
cash. To pay that debt at once then is a
physical impossibility. Time is requisite. Were
all the creditors to rush to judgment together,
a mass of two millions of property would be
brought to market, where there is but the tenth
of that sum of money in circulation to purchase
it. Both debtor and creditor would be ruined,
as debts would be thus rendered desperate
which are in themselves good. Of this truth
I find the merchants here [London] sufficiently
sensible, and I have no doubt we should have
arranged the article of time to mutual satisfaction,
allowing judgment to pass immediately,
and dividing the execution into instalments.—
To Alexander McCaul.
Ford ed., iv, 202.
(1786)
