But these works were calculated on
the Arret of Dec. 29. which admitted here freely and fully the
produce of the American fishery. If confined to that of the French
fishery alone, the enterprise may fail for want of matter to work on.
After this review of the whale fishery as a Political
institution, a few considerations shall be added on its produce as a
basis of Commercial exchange between France and the United-States.
The discussions it has undergone on former occasions, in this point
of view, leaves little new to be now urged.
The United-States not possessing mines of the precious metals,
they can purchase necessaries from other nations so far only as their
produce is received in exchange. Without enumerating our smaller
articles, we have three of principal importance, proper for the
French market, to wit, Tobacco, whale oil, and rice. The first and
most important is Tobacco. This might furnish an exchange for 8.
millions of the productions of this country: but it is under a
monopoly, and that not of a mercantile, but a financiering company,
whose interest is to pay in money, and not in merchandise; and who
are so much governed by the spirit of simplifying their purchases and
proceedings, that they find means to elude every endeavour on the
part of government to make them diffuse their purchases among the
merchants in general.
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