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