The northern ships have brought home twenty, and the
southern sixty tons of oil, on an average; making eighty-six hundred
and forty tons. Every ton of oil, then, has cost the government twenty
pounds in bounty. Still, if they can beat, us out of the field, and
have it to themselves, they will think their money well employed. If
France undertakes, solely, the competition against them, she must do
it at equal expense. The trade is too poor to support itself. The
eighty-five ships, necessary to supply even her present consumption,
bountied, as the English are, will require a sacrifice of twelve hundred
and eighty-five thousand two hundred livres a year, to maintain three
thousand five hundred and seventy seamen, and that, a part of the year
only; and if she will put it to twelve thousand men, in competition with
England, she must sacrifice, as they do, four or five millions a year.
The same number of men might, with the same bounty, be kept in as
constant employ, carrying stone from Bayonne to Cherburg, or coal from
Newcastle to Havre, in which navigations they would be always at
hand, and become as good seamen.
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