Paying the debt

[safazal]

E is convincing. "payment to British financiers" is the right structure.

[zombie_in]

I also selected A...but the answer is E...
Can anyone explain when we use "Payment to" and when "Payment of" ...

I can see only way A can be correct is because of parallelism...
- concerning frontiers with Canada
- trade relations with the British West Indies
- payment to British financiers

lsv, What is the source of this question?

[lsv]

Source: Kaplan online practice test.

A is clearly wrong, because 'were' is grammatically wrong. I'd pick an undiomatic sentence than a grammatically incorrect one.

Btw, can anyone say anything about the difficultly level of the online practice test that comes as part of Kaplan's learning syllabus (Whetherr it is comparable to Kaplan CD test ,the difficulty of which earthlings have complained about on this forum)? I scored 690 on that and it leaves me with a grrr feeling.
Thanks