and

eighty pounds in the whole, and that, to employ the principal part of them from three to four months only. 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, 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. The English consider among their best sailors those employed in carrying 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. Those who are now arriving from America, in consequence of the Arret of December the 29th, will consider it as the false light which has led them to their ruin. They will be apt to say, that they come to the ports of France by invitation of that Arret, that the subsequent one of September the 28th, which drives them

from those ports, founds itself on a single principle, viz.‘that the prohibition of foreign oils is the most useful encouragement which can be given to that branch of industry.' They will say that, if this be a true principle, it was as true on the 29th of December 1787, as on the 20th of September 1788: it was then weighed against other motives, judged weaker and overruled, and it is hard it should be now revived, to ruin them.

The refinery for whale oil, lately established at Rouen, seems to be an object worthy of national attention. In order to judge of its importance, the different qualities of whale oil must be noted. Three qualities are known in the American and English markets. 1st. That of the spermaceti whale. 2nd. Of the Greenland whale. 3rd. Of the Brazil whale. 1. The spermaceti whale found by the Nantuckois, in the neighborhood of the western islands, to which they had gone in pursuit of other whales, retired thence to the coast of Guinea, afterwards to that of Brazil, and begins now, to be best found in the latitude of the Cape of Good Hope, and even of Cape Horn. He is an active, fierce animal, and requires vast address and boldness in the fisherman. The inhabitants of Brazil make little expeditions from their coast, and take some of these fish. But the Americans are the only distant people who have been in the habit of seeking and attacking him in numbers. The British, however, led by the Nantuckois, whom they have decoyed into their service, have begun this fishery. In 1785, they had eighteen ships in it; in 1787, thirty-eight; in 1788, fifty-four, or, as some say, sixty-four. I have calculated on the middle number, fifty-nine. Still they take but a very small proportion of their own demand; we furnish the rest. Theirs is the only market to which we carry that oil, because it is the only one where its properties are known. It is luminous, resists coagulation by cold, to the forty-first degree of Farenheit's thermometer, and fourth of Reaumur's, and yields no smell at all: it is used, therefore, within doors, to lighten shops, and even in the richest houses, for antichambers, stairs, galleries, &c. It sells at the London market for treble the price of common whale oil. This enables the adventurer to pay the duty of eighteen pounds five shillings sterling the ton, and still to have a living profit. Besides the mass of oil produced from the whole body of the whale, his head yields three or four barrels of what is called head matter, from which is made the solid spermaceti, used for medicine and candles. This sells by the pound, at double the price of the oil. The disadvantage of

VOL. II.

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this fishery is, that the sailors are from nine to twelve months absent on the voyage; of course, they are not at hand on any sudden emergency, and are even liable to be taken before they know that war is begun. It must be added, on the subject of this whale, that he is rare and shy, soon abandoning the grounds where he is hunted. This fishery, less losing than the other, and often profitable, will occasion it to be so thronged, soon, as to bring it on a level with the other. It will then require the same expensive support, or to be abandoned.

2. The Greenland whale oil is next in quality. It resists coagulation by cold, to thirty-six degrees of Farenheit, and two of Reaumur; but it has a smell insupportable within doors, and is not luminous. It sells, therefore, in London, at about sixteen pounds the ton. This whale is clumsy and timid; he dives when struck, and comes up to breathe by the first cake of ice, where the fishermen need little address or courage to find and take him. This is the fishery mostly frequented by European nations; it is this fish which yields the fin in quantity, and the voyages last about three or four months.

The third quality is that of the small Brazil whale. He was originally found on the coast of Nantucket, and first led that people to this pursuit: he retired, first to the Banks of Newfoundland, then to the western islands, and is now found within soundings on the coast of Brazil, during the months of December, January, February and March. His oil chills at fifty degrees of Farenheit, and eight of Reaumur, is black and offensive; worth, therefore, but thirteen pounds the ton in London. In warm summer nights, however, it burns better than the Greenland oil.

To the qualities of the oils thus described, it is to be added, that an individual has discovered methods, 1. of converting a great part of the oils of the spermaceti whale into the solid substance called spermaceti, heretofore produced from his head alone; 2. of refining the Greenland whale oil, so as to take from it all smell, and render it limpid and luminous as that of the spermaceti whale; 3. of curdling the oil of the Brazil whale into tallow, resembling that of beef, and answering all its purposes. This person is engaged by the company, which has established the refinery at Rouen: their works will cost them half a million of livres; will be able to refine all the oil which can be used in the kingdom, and even to supply foreign markets. The effects of this refinery, then, would be, 1. to supplant the solid spermaceti of all other nations, by theirs,

of equal quality and lower price; 2. to substitute instead of spermaceti oil, their black whale oil refined, of equal quality and lower price; 3. to render the worthless oil of the Brazil equal in value to tallow; and 4. by accommodating these oils to uses, to which they could never otherwise have been applied, they will extend the demand beyond its present narrow limits, to any supply which can be furnished, and thus give the most effectual encouragement and extension to the whale fishery. But these works were calculated on the Arret of December the 29th, 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, 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 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. The English know its value, and were supplied with it, before the war. A spirit of hostility, since that event, led them to seek Russian rather

than American supplies; a new spirit of hostility has driven them back from Russia, and they are now making contracts for American timber. But of the three articles before mentioned, proved by experience to be suitable for the French market, one is prohibited, one under monopoly, and one alone free, and that the smallest and of very limited consumption. The way to encourage purchasers is, to multiply their means of payment. Whale oil might be an important one. In one scale are the interests of the millions who are lighted, shod, or clothed with the help of it, and the thousands of laborers and manufacturers, who would be employed in producing the articles which might be given in exchange for it, if received from America: in the other scale are the interests of the adventurers in the whale fishery; each of whom, indeed, politically considered, may be of more importance to the state, than a simple laborer or manufacturer; but to make the estimate with the accuracy it merits, we should multiply the numbers in each scale into their individual importance, and see which preponderates.

Both governments have seen with concern, that their commercial intercourse does not grow as rapidly as they would wish. The system of the United States is, to use neither prohibitions nor premiums. Commerce there regulates itself freely, and asks nothing better. Where a government finds itself under the necessity of undertaking that regulation, it would seem, that it should conduct it as an intelligent merchant would; that is to say, invite customers to purchase, by facilitating their means of payment, and by adapting goods to their taste. If this idea be just, government here has two operations to attend to with respect to the commerce of the United States; 1. to do away, or to moderate, as much as possible, the prohibitions and monopolies of their materials for payment; 2. to encourage the institution of the principal manufactures, which the necessities, or the habits of their new customers call for. Under this latter head a hint shall be suggested, which must find its apology in the motive from which it flows; that is, a desire of promoting mutual interests and close friendship. Six hundred thousand of the laboring poor of America, comprehending slaves under that denomination, are clothed in three of the simplest manufactures possible; to wit, oznaburgs, plains, and duffel blankets. The first is a linen; the two last, woollens. It happens, too, that they are used exactly by those who cultivate the tobacco and rice, and in a good degree, by those employed in the whale fishery. To these manufactures they are so habituated, that