them to modify
proportionally the favors granted by the same article to our navigation.
Perhaps they may do what we should feel much more severely, they may
turn their eyes to the favors granted us by their arrets of December 29,
1787, and December 7, 1788, which hang on their will alone, unconnected
with the treaty. Those arrets, among other advantages, admit our whale
oils to the exclusion of that of all other foreigners. And this monopoly
procures a vent for seven-twelfths of the produce of that fishery, which
experience has taught us could find no other market. Near two-thirds of
the produce of our cod fisheries, too, have lately found a free vent in
the colonies of France. This, indeed, has been an irregularity growing
out of the anarchy reigning in those colonies. Yet the demands of the
colonists, even of the Government party among them (if an auxiliary
disposition can be excited by some marks of friendship and distinction
on our part), may perhaps produce a constitutional concession to them
to procure their provisions at the cheapest market; that is to say,
at ours.

Considering the value of the interests we have at stake and
considering the smallness of difference between foreign and native
tonnage on French vessels alone, it might perhaps be thought advisable
to make the sacrifice asked, and especially if it can be so done as
to give no title to other the most favored nations to claim it. If the
act should put French vessels on the footing of those of natives, and
declare it to be in consideration of the favors granted us by the arrets
of December 29, 1787, and December 7, 1788 (and perhaps this would
satisfy them), no nation could then demand the same favor without
offering an equivalent compensation. It might strengthen, too, the
tenure by which those arrets are held, which must be precarious so
long as they are gratuitous.

It is desirable in many instances to exchange mutual advantages by
legislative acts rather than by treaty, because the former, though
understood to be in consideration of each other, and therefore greatly
respected, yet when they become too inconvenient can be dropped at
the will of either party; whereas stipulations by treaty are forever
irrevocable but by joint consent, let a change of circumstances render
them ever so burdensome.

On the whole, if it be the opinion that the first construction is to be
insisted on as ours, in opposition to the second urged by the Court of
France, an