Treasury Department Circular to the Commissioners of Loans, 27 May 1791

Treasury Department Circular
to the Commissioners of Loans

Treasury Department,
May 27 1791

Sir,

By the 18th Section of the Act, making provision for the debt of the United States, it is declared that the payment of interest, whether to States or to Individuals, in respect to the debt of any State which may have exchanged its own securities for those of the United States, shall be suspended until a reexchange shall have taken place or a surrender be made of the last mentioned securities.1

I request therefore that you will inform me whether any thing of the above kind has been transacted in your State. If it has, due attention must be paid to the restriction concerning it.

You will not, I presume, have failed to advert to that part of the 10th section of the same act which limits to the first of June the exchanges of certificates in the case of non-Subscribers.2 The issuing of new certificates to non-Subscribe[r]s for old ones, not produced previous to that day, will, of course, be forborne.

I am, sir, with due consideration, Your Obed Servant

A Hamilton

LS, to Jabez Bowen, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston; copy, to Thomas Smith, Division of Public Records, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Harrisburg.

1. Sections 17 and 18 of the act read in part as follows:

“But as certain states have respectively issued their own certificates, in exchange for those of the United States, whereby it might happen that interest might be twice payable on the same sums:

“Be it further enacted, That the payment of interest whether to states or to individuals, in respect to the debt of any state, by which such exchange shall have been made, shall be suspended, until it shall appear to the satisfaction of the secretary of the treasury, that certificates issued for that purpose by such state, have been re-exchanged or redeemed, or until those which shall not have been re-exchanged or redeemed, shall be surrendered to the United States.” (1 Stat. description begins The Public Statutes at Large of the United States of America (Boston, 1845). description ends 144 [August 4, 1790].)

2. 1 Stat. description begins The Public Statutes at Large of the United States of America (Boston, 1845). description ends 141.

Index Entries

You Are Looking At

Source Project: Hamilton Papers
Title: Treasury Department Circular to the Commissioners of Loans, 27 May 1791
Authors: Treasury Department
Hamilton, Alexander
Recipient: Commissioners of Loans
Date: 27 May 1791

Reference

Cite as: “Treasury Department Circular to the Commissioners of Loans, 27 May 1791,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-08-02-0346. [Original source: The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, vol. 8, February 1791 – July 1791, ed. Harold C. Syrett. New York: Columbia University Press, 1965, pp. 394–395.]