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 eight millions of the productions of
this country; but it is under a monopoly, and that not of a mercantile,
but of 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 endeavor on the part of government, to make them diffuse
their purchases among the merchants in general. Little profit is
derived from this, then, as an article of exchange for the produce and
manufactures of France. Whale-oil might be next in importance; but
that is now prohibited. American rice is not yet of great, but it is of
growing consumption in France, and being the only article of the three
which is free, it may become a principal basis of exchange. Time and
trial may add a fourth, that is, timber. But some essays, rendered
unsuccessful by unfortunate circumstances, place that, at present, under
a discredit, which it will be found hereafter not to have merited.
Pages:
847
848
849
850
851
852
853
854
855
856
857
858
859
860
861
862
863
864
865
866
867
868
869
870
871