Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/275

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PARIS RE-OPENED.
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claimants. Walter Boyd, the banker who fled from Paris in 1792, was one of these. He had started a bank in London, had helped to float Pitt's loans, was M.P. for Shaftesbury, and in the prospect of restitution by the French Goverment had contracted heavy engagements, when the coup d'état of 1797 shattered his hopes, drove him again from Paris, and ultimately caused his bankruptcy. On the return of peace he hurried over to press his claims, and he was accompanied or followed by his London partner, Paul Benfield, the man held up to odium by Burke for his usurious loans to the Nabob of Arcot. It was natural enough that men on such a quest should be loath to leave without having effected their purpose, and both of them were surprised by the decree for the detention of all British subjects between sixteen and sixty years of age.