I will now ask permission to bring that subject under your
consideration.
The mutual extension of their commerce was among the fairest advantages
to be derived to France and the United States, from the independence of
the latter. An exportation of eighty millions, chiefly in raw materials,
is supposed to constitute the present limits of the commerce of the
United States with the nations of Europe; limits, however, which extend
as their population increases. To draw the best proportion of this into
the ports of France, rather than of any other nation, is believed to
be the wish and interest of both. Of these eighty millions, thirty are
constituted by the single article of tobacco. Could the whole of this
be brought into the ports of France, to satisfy its own demands, and the
residue to be re-vended to other nations, it would be a powerful link
of commercial connection. But we are far from this. Even her own
consumption, supposed to be nine millions, under the administration
of the monopoly to which it is farmed, enters little, as an article of
exchange, into the commerce of the two nations.
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