Queries Concerning Trade with the French Colonies, [ca. December 1785]
Queries Concerning Trade with the French Colonies
[ca. Dec. 1785]
Eclaircissements à Tirer Des Amériquains
- 1. Le commerce libre dans nos colonies est-il également nécessaire aux 13 états unis, et s’il existe à cet égard des différences, en marquer le dégré et la Cause.
- 2. L’Amérique indépendante seroit-elle disposée à reconnoitre par des concessions avantageuses dans son Commerce, la liberté que la France lui acorderoit en lui ouvrant en totalité les marchés de ses colonies?
- 3. L’Amérique est-elle maîtresse d’accorder chez elle des faveurs à une nation, qu’elle refuseroit à une autre?
- 4. Si la France admettoit sans restriction les productions du crû de l’Amérique, sous la condition d’un impot majeur dont la remise seroit assurée aux propriétaires, en raison du remploi qu’ils auroient fait du produit de leur vente en objets du Crû de France ou de ses manufactures, les Amériquains y consentiroient-ils, et se croiroient-ils lésés ou favorisés?
- 5. Enfin, quels sont les avantages que pourroit nous accorder l’Amérique en réciprocité de ceux qu’elle sollicite, soit dans les marchés des colonies, soit en Europe? Si la France consentoit à ses demandes, pourroit-elle nous en accorder qui nous indemnisat du tort qu’éprouvoit notre navigation par nos moindres importations dans nos colonies? Enfin, pourroit-elle nous accorder la liberté de pêcher sur les côtes de ses états du nord, et assurer une compensation de préférence à nos lainages, à nos toiles, à nos sels et à nos vins?
- 6. Le congrès actuel est-il revêtu de pouvoirs sufisans pour former un traité sur les bases d’une réciprocité d’avantages tels que les deux nations qui l’auroient contracté se toucheroient pour ainsi dire par tous les points, et n’auroient plus sous les raports du Commerce et de la politique qu’une seule et même existence?
MS (DLC); in clerk’s hand; endorsed by TJ: “Commerce with France—French islds. Queries on”; undated, evidently written in late Nov. or early Dec., for on 2 Jan. 1786 TJ wrote Jay that “certain Questions … proposed … by an Individual” were submitted to him “very soon after” his own letter of 20 Nov. 1785 to Vergennes. Tr (DNA: PCC, No. 87); in French, in Short’s hand; enclosed in TJ to Jay, 2 Jan. 1786. PrC of foregoing (DLC: TJ Papers, 17: 3030–1). Tr (DNA: PCC, No. 87); in clerk’s hand; English translation of foregoing, prepared in Jay’s office. PrC (DLC: TJ Papers, 17: 3032–4); in French, in Short’s hand; made from a missing MS.
The author of these queries has not been identified, but he may have been Simon Bérard, one of the leading merchants of France, founder and one of the administrators of the new Compagnie des Indes which in 1785 Calonne invested with some of the monopolistic privileges of the old company that had been suspended in 1769. Bérard was greatly interested in American trade and became a principal figure in the effort to break the tobacco monopoly of the farmers-general (see Lafayette to TJ, under 6 Mch. 1786; Bérard to TJ, 6 May 1786). Officially TJ was obliged to regard these queries as having been handed to him by a private individual and he forwarded them to Congress “only that Congress may see what one Frenchman at least thinks on the Subject” (TJ’s report on his conversations with Vergennes, printed as an enclosure to TJ to John Jay, 2 Jan. 1786). Actually he suspected that they came from the minister (the unidentified individual who presented them to TJ had recently submitted a memorial on the question for Vergennes’ consideration) and that they were therefore to be interpreted in the context of his hint in the letter to Vergennes of 20 Nov. 1785 “that both Nations might perhaps come into the Opinion that the Condition of Natives might be a better ground of Intercourse for their Citizens than that of the most favored Nation.” The sixth query would seem to lend support to this reasoning; Jay’s translator rendered this query as follows: “Is the present Congress invested with sufficient power to establish a Treaty upon the basis of reciprocal advantage, like two mutually contracting nations, the articles of whose respective treaties would be exactly correspondent to each other, and whose political as well as commercial regulations should have only one and the same existence?” (DNA: PCC, No. 87). In this connection, see TJ to Adams, 28 July 1785, notes and enclosure.