In 1881, Matthew Hamilton Gault, then a prosperous businessman and Member of Parliament, remitted to the Belfast Banking Company (Ireland) the sum of £156.5.0. With this payment, he discharged the balance of his father's debt which, in 1842, had compelled the financially distressed Gault family to emigrate. In response, a director of the overseas bank wrote Matthew Gault a letter expressing the directorship's admiration for this "act so honourable and unusual" in the elimination of a debt that had long ago been formally written off: