Repayment of Loan to France, [24 May] 1794
Repayment of Loan to France
[24 May 1794]
On 18 March Washington transmitted to the House a request from French minister Fauchet for an advance of loan payments due to France. The House referred the president’s message to a select committee chaired by Smith (South Carolina), whose report the House tabled on 17 April (, 3d Cong., 1st sess., 524, 600).
Mr. Madison moved, that a late message from the President, which had been referred to a select committee, should come before a committee of the whole house. The message was relative to an advancement of money to the ambassador of the republic of France. Some time ago, it had been found that there was no money in the treasury, but what had been appropriated. There was now money unappropriated.1
Philadelphia Gazette, 26 May 1794.
1. The House made the message the order of the day for 26 May, when the Committee of the Whole considered it. At the House’s request, Hamilton submitted his “Report on Loans Negotiated in Europe Not Already Laid before the Legislature” on 27 May. Two days later JM reported from committee “a bill providing for the payment of a certain sum of money to the French Republic,” which was passed by the House on 30 May but defeated in the Senate on 7 June (, 3d Cong., 1st sess., 722–23, 731, 739, 130; , 16:431–32 and nn.).