The English consider among their best
sailors, those employed to carry coal from Newcastle to London. France
cannot expect to raise her fishery, even to the supply of her own
consumption, in one year, or in several years. Is it not better, then,
by keeping her ports open to the United States, to enable them to aid in
maintaining the field against the common adversary, till she shall be in
condition to take it herself, and to supply her own wants? Otherwise her
supplies must aliment that very force, which is keeping her under. On
our part, we can never be dangerous competitors to France. The extent
to which we can exercise this fishery, is limited to that of the barren
island of Nantucket, and a few similar barren spots; its duration, to
the pleasure of this government, as we have no other market. A material
observation must be added here: sudden vicissitudes of opening and
shutting ports, do little injury to merchants settled on the opposite
coast, watching for the opening, like the return of a tide, and ready to
enter with it. But they ruin the adventurer, whose distance requires six
months' notice.
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