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the able report of the Committee on Agriculture, made to 

 the House on the 2d of May, 1S26 ; in the Manual that 

 was prepared and published on their recommendation ; 

 and in the answers, that were sent from all parts of the 

 United States to the then Secretary of the Treasury, Mr 

 Rush, in consequence of his circular queries, (as far as 

 those answers have come to my knowledge,) the impor- 

 tance of the exportation of raw silk as an article of com- 

 merce, is not any where suggested. Thus, our agricul- 

 ture as far as silk is concerned, was considered only as 

 auxiliary to domestic manufactures ; while the idea first 

 thrown out and developed in the ' Essays,' contemplates 

 solely the advantage of the agricultural interest of our 

 country, which alone is to be benefited by the sale of our 

 produce to foreign nations in the form of a raw material, 

 manufactures may follow or not, as it may happen. In 

 either case, our country is to be benefited by the sale of 

 an article exclusively the fruit of agricultural industry. 

 When we consider that the small country of Piedmont 

 exported, in the year 1829, near five millions of pounds 

 of her raw and thrown silks, we shall better understand 

 the value of this suggestion. France does not permit 

 the exportation of her silks, unless manufactured. 



These reflections could not but forcibly strike the 

 minds of the enlightened committee to whom the work 

 was referred. That committee did me the honor to ad- 

 dress me through their chairman, and desired my inter- 

 ference to retain Mr D'Homergue in this country. I 

 was requested by them to ask him on what terms he 

 would accept to be placed at the head of a national school 

 of filature ; in consequence of which, after having ascer- 

 tained the lowest terms that could reasonably be offered 

 to him, and obtained his assent, not without difficulty, as 

 his pretensions were higher, and these I found justified 

 afterwards by a letter from his father, in which, appealing 

 to his experience of forty years, he told him that forty thou- 

 sand dollars would hardly be sufficient to enable him to 

 execute what he had undertaken ; I submitted a plan, 

 which the committee immediately adopted, and presented 



