French traders

“ Every possible precaution was taken to maintain the position of the merchants in the European market by rules which practically forced the wool into the hands of foreign and not native buyers, so that English traders complained that their interests were sacrificed to courting the patronage of the Continent. ”

“ An active trade was in the mean time carried on with the British traders, and every means resorted to for the purpose of totally blinding the suspicions which the more humane class of the French population found means to impart to the officers of the fort, respecting the secret animosity of the Indians. These hints were entirely disregarded by Major Etherington, the commandant of the fort, and he even threatened to confine any person who would have the future audacity to whisper these tales of danger into his ears. ”

“ His foreign customer will purchase less, because the cost is so much greater, and because his means are lessened by the increase in the prices of food through the export duty on French products. The French peasant finds his market contracted by an export duty which prevents the English consumers of his eggs, poultry, and wine from buying as largely as they once did ”

“ The development of the forces of France is altogether continental. I have been enabled to create, within my states, an internal trade, which diffuses subsistence and money, from the extremities to the centre of the empire, by the impulse given to agricultural and manufacturing industry, and by the rigorous prohibition of 111foreign productions. This state of things is such that it is impossible for me to decide whether French commerce would gain much by peace with England. ”

“ Specie, the national currency in France, allows labour a competition with commerce, in fixing prices; but paper currency or credit, guided by the spirit of monopoly in England, enables commerce to settle the prices of labour. Commerce and productive labour arc dealers; with a national currency they bargain on equal terms; with a corporation currency, governed by commerce, on unequal. Hence the price of labour being higher in France than in England, France shuts her ports against English manufactures. Yet English credit or paper, far exceeds French coin ”

“ We must also have sound and organised French credit information.
Our salesmen must know the French language and sympathise with the French temperament. Give the French buyer a ghost of a chance and he will meet you more than half way. Unlike the stolid Englishman he is plastic, adaptable and imaginative. Understanding is a large part of the trade battle.
We must accumulate large stocks of American goods in France to indulge the purchaser in his favourite occupation of long and elaborate choosing and to meet demands for renewal. To ship these goods we must have our own bottoms. ”

“ The awkward English monetary system is alone responsible for a large percentage of the [Pg 291] world-wide diminution of British trade. All other nations have shown greater adaptability to the characteristics of foreign markets, and the capabilities and peculiarities of the peoples who compose those markets. The Germans, French, and Americans circulate their catalogues and price lists in the language of the country where they seek a market and quote prices in its coin, giving the equivalents in francs, marks, and dollars. ”

“ Aided by the prevalence of peace at home, and by the disappearance of feudal tolls on trade, the English advanced rapidly in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and instead of exporting the raw wool began to make it into cloth and to export the finished product. Trade was furthered also by the continental conquests of English kings, which brought England and the South of France into close relationship, and built up a large import trade in French wines. ”

“ France found, actually, that after the return of peace the Americans ceased to buy her manufactures, and flocked for trade to the English markets. French merchants complained that none of them ever gained in commerce with the United States: when all the best part of the American custom went to English merchants, why should France or any other country on the Continent relax the restrictions which were designed to protect the home market and the colonial market for the benefit of natives? ”

“ Less wine then will be imported into England, in exchange for its commodities, when the trade is perfectly free, than when she is peculiarly favoured by commercial treaties. The rate of profits however will not have varied; money will have altered in relative value in the two countries, and the advantage gained by France will be the obtaining a greater quantity of English, in exchange for a given quantity of French goods, while the loss sustained by England will consist in obtaining a smaller quantity of French goods in exchange for a given quantity of those of England. ”

“ Fourthly, I am likewise assured by merchants, that upon this additional forty shillings, the French will at least equally raise their duties upon all commodities we export thither.
Fifthly, If an original extract of the exports and imports be true, we have been gainers, upon the balance, by our trade with France, for several years past; and, although our gain amounts to no great sum, we ought to be satisfied, since we are no losers, with the only consolation we are capable of receiving. ”

“ Trade, already dislocated by the confusion of the time, tended to [Pg 197] leave Paris, where the Assignats were most abundant. Speculation naturally increased. Large dealers, contractors and capitalists made considerable profits by laying in stores, by holding back commodities, and by turning the fluctuations of the market to account. ”

“ At such intervals in the history of trade, commercial failures break out in England, while, in France, industry itself is stopped, partly because it is compelled to retreat through the competition of the English, that, at such times becomes resistless in all markets, and partly because, as an industry of luxuries, it is affected with preference by every stoppage of trade. Thus, besides the general crisis, France experiences her own national crises, which, how-ever, are determined by and conditioned upon the general state of the world's market much more than by local French influences. ”

“ Whereas all the gain we have at present, whilst the trade is confined to the Company, is the employment of one hundred and twenty men in all their factories, and two or three ships in that trade, manned with perhaps one hundred and twenty men in time of war, to enrich nine or ten [62] merchants at their country's expense; at the same time betraying the nation, by allowing the French to encroach upon us at the bottom of the Bay, having given up by that means the greatest part of their trade there to the French. ”

“ But for what purpose they were called into being, what there was in these associations of common trades to surround with gilded insignia, and how they came to be possessed of broad lands and church preferments, few people now care to think or to inquire. Trade and traders have no dignity any more in the eyes of any one, except what money lends to them ”

“ The Central Markets are not a place which the habitual Parisian cares to venture into. Apart from its own peculiar and particularly pungent odours, the markets are peopled with a class of stallkeeper who do not exactly keep their tongue in their pocket, as the French say. They have, in fact, a flow of language, and it requires a brave man to make a stand against it—and all the brave men are at the front just now. ”

“ The trade with France after the Revolution seems to have been carried on upon an equitable footing until 1675, when one of those popular alarms that often disgrace this country was raised, that France was ruining us, for there was a balance of trade against us of 965,128l. Land happened at the time to have fallen in price. ”

“ Decline during the period of the religious wars.—The promising development was checked by the religious wars of the later sixteenth century; France must endure a period of anarchy at home and powerlessness abroad. French commerce declined at its source, as production languished; and was attacked abroad by competitors and by the pirates who infested the coasts. About 1600 the French merchant marine had almost disappeared from the Atlantic; voyages to foreign lands had ceased, and even the coasting trade had passed into the hands of the English, Flemish, and Dutch. ”

“ It would only commit the exports, as well as imports, between France and America, to a monopoly, which, being secure against rivals in the sale of the merchandise of France, would not be likely to sell at such moderate prices as might encourage its consumption there, and enable it to bear a competition with similar articles from other countries. I am persuaded this exportation of coin may be prevented, and that of commodities effected, by leaving both operations to the French and American merchants, instead of the Farmers General. ”

“ This, indeed, may perhaps arise from the difference in the general character of the two kingdoms: in England, and even in America, there are few tradesmen long resident in a town, without having obtained a sufficiency to retire; whilst the French towns being comparatively poor, and their trade comparatively insignificant, the French tradesman can seldom do more than obtain a scanty subsistence by his business. In all the best French towns, the tradesmen have more the air of chandlers than of great dealers. ”

“ It is objected that we are under a necessity of having goods from countries who will take none of ours. France does not allow money to be exported, nor any ship to import goods, unless French goods are exported from the same port, to the value of [Pg 197] the goods which were imported. by our law we are forbid to export money. but as I don’t think the example of nations a good answer, I shall endeavour to give a better. suppose our money is not valued abroad, and we have occasion for goods from Denmark, who takes none of ours. ”

“ The most remarkable body of traders in England during the Middle Ages were the Merchants of the Staple, who traded in wool. The wool trade had for long been the largest and most lucrative body of trade in the country, and it was one in which the Kings of England were particularly interested, for their customs revenue was drawn largely from wool and wool fells; and, moreover, when they desired to borrow money in anticipation of revenue it was to the wool merchants that they turned, because the wool merchants were the wealthiest traders in the country. ”

“ But this wise measure gave the French people that most inestimable of all blessings in a political and monetary crisis—a currency which, without being redundant, is sufficient, and, being not convertible into the precious metals, neither augments the strain on them, nor is liable to be swept away by foreign export. ”

“ We observe your remarks on the timorousness of the French merchants, respecting the formation of trading companies, which, you say, is occasioned by the change and fluctuation of news. That the spirit for trade will always be governed by the rise [Pg 287] and fall of military strength, is a maxim always to be admitted in the first attempts to establish a commerce between any two nations, because success in war is supposed to give security or protection to it. ”

“ By buying silks and wines of France, we give her so much purchasing power in the world's markets, a power which, as her trade returns show—she is a large importer upon balance—she fully exercises. Well, if she spends the money she receives from you in those products of foreign countries which she requires, as we know she does, she thereby, in turn, confers on those countries a corresponding purchasing power, and they, in their turn, lay out the money so received among other nations, and, as we are the principal manufacturers, we get the principal share in the business. ”

“ In the trade of those skins, the merchant draws a double profit, one upon the score of his paying no more for these skins than one-half of what he afterwards sells them for, in the lump, to the factors, for the Rochel ships; and the other, by the exorbitant rate he puts upon the goods which the poor planter takes in exchange for his skins. If this be duly weighed, we will not think it strange that these merchants have a more beneficial trade than a great many tradesmen in the world."—Canadian Antiquarian and Numismatic Journal, 1872, p. ”

“ In France the point has apparently been reached, and we find that, with a lower scale of wages than in England, it is becoming more and more difficult every day to maintain that lower scale, and the export trade of its manufactured goods to foreign markets. ”

“ In peace they [Pg 683] will suffer the diminution of price for their produce. The advantage of supplying the French, Dutch, and Spanish colonies, may at first sight lead to a different opinion; but when the port of New Orleans is shut to all but French ships, there will no longer be that competition which now exists, and which always results in the highest price that commodities can bear. The French merchants have neither the large capital, nor have they the steady temper and persevering industry which foster commerce. ”

“ The French industry has been fostered by tariffs. When the Board of Trade calculation was made, French tariffs were found to bear upon British cotton goods with about the same severity as those of Germany, except that the former treated more hardly yarns and cotton thread for sewing. French protectionism has kept down her exports ”