When I received your letter, the time of my departure was too near to permit me to obtain information from Constantinople, relative to the demand and price of rice there.  I therefore wrote to a merchant at Marseilles, concerned in the Levant trade, for the prices current of rice at Constantinople and at Marseilles for several years past.  He has sent me only the present price at Marseilles, and that of a particular cargo at Constantinople.  I send you a copy of his letter.  The Algerines form an obstacle; but the object of our commerce in the Mediterranean is so immense, that we ought to surmount that obstacle, and I believe it could be done by means in our power, and which, instead of fouling us with the dishonorable and criminal baseness of France and England, will place us in the road to respect with all the world.

I have obtained, and enclose to you, a state of all the rice imported into this country in the course of one year, which shows its annual consumption to be between eighty-one and eighty-two thousand quintals.  I think you may supplant all the other furnishing States, except as to what is consumed at Marseilles and its neighborhood.  In fact, Paris is the place of main consumption.  Havre, therefore, is the port of deposit, where you ought to have one or two honest, intelligent, and active consignees.  The ill success of a first or second experiment should not damp the endeavors to open this market fully, but the obstacles should be forced by perseverance.  I have obtained, from different quarters, seeds of the dry rice; but having had time to try them, I find they will not vegetate, having been too long kept.  I have still several other expectations from the East Indies.  If this rice be as good, the object of health will render it worth experiment with you.  Cotton is a precious resource, and which cannot fail with you.  I wish the cargo of olive plants sent by the way of Baltimore, and that which you will perceive my correspondent is preparing now to send, may arrive to you in good order.  This is the object for the patriots of your country; for that tree once established there, will be the source of the greatest wealth and happiness.  But to insure success, perseverance may be necessary.  An essay or two may fail.  I think, therefore, that an annual sum should be subscribed, and it need not be a great one.  A common country laborer should be engaged to make it his sole occupation, to prepare and pack plants and berries at Marseilles, and in the autumn to go with them himself through the canal of Languedoc to Bordeaux, and there to stay with them till he can put them on board a vessel bound directly to Charleston; and this repeated annually, till you have a sufficient stock insured, to propagate from, without further importation.  I should guess that fifty guineas a year would do this, and if you think proper to set such a subscription afoot, write me down for ten guineas of the money, yearly, during my stay in France, and offer my superintendence of the business on this side the water if no better can be had.