$12 
ledged, must ever be deemed the staple 
branch of the national industry of France; 
but without an unlimited, or at least an 
indefinite market for the commodity, 
will France ever be tempted to grow an 
unlimited or an indefinite quantity? She 
must copy the villainous policy of the 
Dutch, who will destroy one-half of the 
produce of a spice island for the purpose 
of raising the price of the other half. Is 
she to hoard her corn year over year in 
public granaries, exposed to the depreda- 
tions of vermin, the risk of fire, &c. not 
to mention the immense loss of capital 
lying dead? Ina year of scarcity what 
resource has she? But the question is 
foreign to the present subject, and we 
shall not discuss it here. 
As to the manufactures of France, the 
republic has decided advantages over the 
monarchy, for the revolution has de- 
stroyed that baneful prejudice which ex- 
cluded manufacturers, mechanics, and 
merchants, from what was considered as 
genteel society ; it has annihilated the 
public debt, and the circulating capital 
1s chiefly in specie and wares, labour is 
low, and the other. states of continental 
Europe can set no manufactures in com- 
petition: with those of France. In 
Great Britain the immense mass of pub- 
lic and private paper in circulation, the 
amount and manner of levying the pub- 
lic imposts, with the unpardonable* ze- 
glect of agriculture, and of the fisheries, 
have raised the price of labour to such a 
rate, that notwithstanding the superiority 
of British mechanism, if efficacious mea- 
sures are not taken to secure the neces- 
saries of common life at a fair price, her 
exportation must sooner or later be con- 
fined to such articles as cannot be made 
elsewhere,” 
HISTORY, POLITICS, AND STATISTICS. 
It is observed, that in order to carry 
on her fisheries with advantage, and the 
maritime trade with security, the republic 
must establish a durable peace upon solid 
terms, or must assume a superiority upon 
the ocean. For ofr part, we have no 
hope of the one and no fear of the other. 
The speculations concerning the mari- 
time trade of France, and the number of 
seamen she would be able to rear, edu- 
cate, and employ in the fisheries, have 
been so much deranged by the renewal 
of the war, that it would be irrelevant 
to notice them. The neglect of Ame- 
rica during her warfare with France to 
have secured St. Domingo is reprobated 
as an irretrievable blunder; some re- 
marks occur on this subject which may 
be of service at a future period. 
“« The acquisition of St. Domingo would 
have been, both in a commercial and politi- 
cal consideration, every thing that America 
could rationally desire: it would have ena- 
bled the United States to carry on a wide, 
extensive, and profitable maritime trade ; 
and, as :t would have rendered the political 
and mercantile interests of America and Great 
Britain reciprocal and mutual, by securing 
the British possessions in the West Indies, 
it would have raised an insuperable barrier 
between the United States and their perfidi- 
ous sister, the French Republic.t 
«<St Domingo lost, the Americans haye 
turned their views towards the island of 
Cuba; they consider the acquisition of that 
settlement as the certain result of a quarrel 
with Spain, and they pretend to have already 
a plausible pretext to make a claim upon that 
forlorn monarchy. But will France, now 
military mistress of the gulph of Mexico,’ 
suffer to settle under the lee of St. Domingo’ 
a power, which might thereby become her. 
rival in the colony trade? Certainlynot; the 
very idea js repugnant tocommon sense, The 
consulate may perhaps permit, and even en- 
* Agriculture surely was never attended to more assiduously and successfully than it has 
been within these last few years ; the fisheries have been 
attention is now setting in towards them. 
grossly neglected, but the tide of 
+ « That St. Domingo, being a state of America, would have secured the possessions of 
Great Britain in the West Indies, admits, we think, of no sort of doubt. 
To maintain that 
set lement, and the tranquillity of its own coasts and maritime commerce, it would have 
- become, with the government of America, a necessary policy to encourage, and support if 
required, the permanency of the maritime preponderance of the Britishempire. The United 
States could then never have any thing to apprehend from a naval power, nor from armies to 
be carried across the Atlantic ocean direct. Nor could the West-India colonies of Great 
Britain be, in any wise, endangered by the vicinity of the Americans. That government 
in possession of St. Domingo could by no rule of prudence, nor maxim in polities, aim at 
the acquisition of more islands ; the produce of that settlement would be abundant for the 
interior consumption of the United States, and for all nseful purposes in their foreign trade ; 
to attempt further aggrandisement by conquest, or to monopolize the sugar trade, could not 
fail to combing Great Britain and France against them; a circumstance that, were they in 
possession of all the sugar-islands, they could not be prepared against for centuries to 
come.” F 
aH 
WCE ot ae oe 
sth) id oN 
