the hogshead, in ours, and this new arrangement giving them sixty-two
livres ten sols the hogshead, in addition to their freight, that is to
say, one hundred and two livres ten sols, instead of forty livres, their
vessels will leave every other branch of business to fill up this. They
will consequently leave a void in those other branches, which will be
occupied by English, Dutch, and Swedes, on the spot. They complain of
our tonnage duty, but it is because it is not understood. In the ports
of France, we pay fees for anchorage, buoys, and beacons, fees
to measurers, weighers, and guagers, and in some countries, for
light-houses. We have thought it better that the public here should pay
all these, and reimburse itself by a consolidation of them into one fee,
proportioned to the tonnage of the vessel, and therefore called by
that name. They complain that the foreign tonnage is higher than the
domestic. If this complaint had come from the English, it would not have
been wonderful, because the foreign tonnage operates really as a tax on
their commerce, which, under this name, is found to pay sixteen dollars
and fifty cents for every dollar paid by France. It was not conceived,
that the latter would have complained of a measure calculated to operate
so unequally on her rival, and I still suppose she would not complain,
if the thing were well understood. The refusing to our vessels the
faculty of becoming national bottoms, on sale to their citizens, was
never before done by any nation but England. I cannot help hoping that
these were wanderings of a moment, founded in misinformation, which
reflection will have corrected before you receive this.

Whenever jealousies are expressed as to any supposed views of ours, on
the dominion of the West Indies, you cannot go farther than the truth,
in asserting we have none. If there be one principle more deeply rooted
than any other in the mind of every American, it is, that we should
have nothing to do with conquest. As to commerce, indeed, we have strong