TOBACCO SUITABLE FOR EUROPEAN MARKETS.

The description of leaf tobacco most suitable for the London market, is that of a light red, copper, or cinnamon color, with a large, thick, tough leaf, free from blisters and pieces of waxy dark tobacco, and without any mixture of broken-off short leaves. A most essential point to be observed in the assortment, is the dry condition of the tobacco, without which it will not keep, but gets mouldy and heated. The casks should be uniformly packed, so that there be no bad and heated caps at each end, weighing about 10 to 10 cwts., and the tobacco lightly pressed when packed, as by too great pressure it becomes sticky, and the color, which it is important to preserve, is liable to become darkened.

Stemmed tobacco, or strips, should be lightly pressed, in order to allow easy inspection of the length and quality of the leaf itself; and it is desirable that the color should be bright, and the stalk uniformly well stripped off.

For the north of Spain and Germany, dark, rich, long, sweet, leafy tobacco is required. In Flanders, the commonest description is taken, the lowness of price being in that quarter the main consideration.

AMERICAN COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE.

A regular trade is kept up between Pittsburg, (Penn.,) and the Santa Fé country. A merchant there, a Mr. Beeler, ships goods in a steamboat for Independence, Missouri, which are taken thence in wagons to Santa Fé, a distance of 897 miles by land. Goods are also consigned to him for the American Fur Company, from the eastern cities, to be sent on steamboats to St. Louis, and then be loaded in steamers to the Yellow Stone, 3060 miles; there reloaded into keelboats, and taken to the very head of the Missouri river to the company's fort and store, in the Rocky Mountains, 600 miles farther. The whole distance to which, from the eastern cities, is about 5640 miles. Such is the spirit of trade and commerce.

THE article in the present number of this magazine on " Maryland, and its Resources," prepared, at our request, by W. G. Lyford, Esq., editor of the Baltimore Commercial Journal and Price Current, is a continuation of the series of papers on the resources of the several states, which was commenced in the April number by an article on the "Commerce and Resources of New Hampshire." We call upon our friends, and all who are interested in the subject in the United States, to aid us in our purpose, either by furnishing us with articles, or the materials for their preparation. It is our plan to render the "MERCHANTS' MAGAZINE" truly national in its character, and to develop, as far as it may be in our power, the commercial resources of our whole country; but, to do this, we must rely upon the aid of the patriotic and intelligent citizens of the different states.

ERRATA to Professor Tucker's article, in the June number of this magazine, on "Import Duties:"

Page 507, 25th line from the top, for "about four per cent," read thirty; and for "thirty," read four.

520, tenth line from the bottom, after "either," insert first.

46

516, line 25, for "fero tali," read pro tali.

46

66 520, 46

for "second," read secondly.

46

520, ninth line from the bottom, for "third," read thirdly.

522, line 22, for "that," read then.

522, 23, for " producers," read consumers.

44 522, seventeenth line from the bottom, for "which" read what.

46

524, line 12, for "benefits of trade," read benefits of free trade.

HUNT'S

MERCHANTS' MAGAZINE.

AUGUST, 1841.

ART. I.-THE COMMERCIAL HISTORY OF FRANCE.

I.

THE BOURBONS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION.

The

COULD the marshals who paid, a few months ago, the last tribute to the Emperor Napoleon, have reviewed the revolutions in which they stood by his side; or, going further, have called up before them the memory of the convulsions in the midst of which their childhood had passed, they would have brought together the materials for a drama more bold than the most imaginative poet could have conceived, and yet as strictly shackled by the laws of unity as could have been required by the most rigid censor. course of an ordinary lifetime was sufficient to cover the humiliation and overthrow of the most absolute dynasty in Europe; the subsequent construction of a democracy, the most licentious; the establishment of an empire the most splendid; and finally, after every note had been struck to which the finger of the speculatist could reach, the erection of a mon. archy whose chief characteristic is its freedom from the points that more prominently distinguished its predecessors. The Bourbons were dethroned because they paid no attention to the demands of the lower classes; and after them arose a system which was ineffectual, because it paid at tention to nothing else. The empire was built on the experience of the structures whose place it was to supply; and while, on the one hand, by means of its splendid victories and munificent improvements, it conciliated the affections of the third estate, it preserved to its founder the supreme authority, untrammelled by the restraints which a representative govern ment would throw over him. The administration of Louis Philippe, like a shuttlecock, which can only be kept above-ground by being kept in motion, has passed from policy to policy with a swiftness so great, that it is difficult to discover in it the existence of those great characteristics which marked the establishments which it follows. There has been a steady progress, we acknowledge, since the revolution of 1830, to an increased liberalization of the state. Its finances have been placed in an

order which gradually approaches, in its symmetry, to the model which is afforded by those of Great Britain. While the political constitution of the realm has varied from shape to shape, its commercial energies have expanded to an extent which will oppose a barrier to the encroachments of prerogative, which it will require a second revolution to overthrow. The smallest manufactory at Lyons is a republic in itself; and by its looms, or at its engine, stand men who have learnt in the best school which the philosopher can devise, the value and the extent of their rights. The peasant, who lifted his arm against the crying oppression and the gross licentiousness of Louis XV., has been followed by the well-fed and enterprising manufacturer, who still retains, in the increased advantages which he possesses for self-defence, the spirit which would enable him to make use of them. We traced, in a preceding number, the course by which a private bank, started by a Scotch adventurer in Paris, arose to a pitch of credit and of strength so great, that it involved in its existence the temporary prosperity and the immediate resources of the state. We might rehearse at present, as a fit introduction to a consideration of the commercial history of the French nation, the bold assumptions by which it drew within its vaults the entire circulation of the kingdom, till after having fairly taken on board the floating wealth which was thus brought together, it foundered in the first storm, and cast its treasures in wreck on the shore, to be snatched up by the officers of the customs as the prizes of the king's prerogative. The history of the Mississippi Scheme is the best illustration which can be brought forward, of the profligacy of the times that produced it. We proceed, in carrying out the plan which we suggested in the summary which we have already given of its operations, to consider the condition of the actual resources of the realm, in the period that intervened between the bankruptcy under Louis XV., and the revolution under his successor.

"I may be blamed for having neglected the agricultural resources of the realm," said Calonne, when delivering his last account; "but if I have done so, it has been because my whole administration has been devoted to the fostering of its manufactures." The principle of Louis XIV., that the producing and the working classes must ever remain hostile, had led the court, in choosing which of the antagonist interests it should prefer, to bestow its patronage on that which possessed the most available means at hand. The silk and porcelain manufactories were growing up with a rapidity that had startled the old economists from theories which they had drawn from the sluggish movements of the landed capitalists. The shackles which a little while after were laid on trade, were not then in existence; and the operations of the French merchants were extending over the continent under the privilege with which they were endowed, of pursuing their schemes without the interference of the king or his council. While the native productions of the realm were rapidly vanishing, its manufactures, whether they were framed from the resources which were supplied at home, or from the raw material from other countries, increased till they obtained throughout Europe a market which opened to them a source of boundless wealth. Had the commerce of France been left to itself by the civil administration, and had it been properly backed by her producing interests, it would have preserved, in all probability, to the present moment, the supremacy, both in east and west, to which it had at first attained.

When the feudal tenures were abolished in Great Britain, they opened to the tenant himself the prospects of self-advancement, which the freehold possession of his land afforded to him. He was master of the soil, unclogged by those unwise restrictions, which could rob him of the feeling of independence, and place him in the position of a slave, rather than of a citizen. The sharpest incentive to labor, is the certainty of reaping its fruits. The laboring man will never sow that the wild-fowl may gather; and when he finds that the taxes which gild the royal nest, eat away threefourths of what he produces, he throws aside his spade, and falls back on pauperism, as the most likely means of support. When the military services which were due from the tenant to the lord paramount, were commuted into a pecuniary tax, it affected those only who ceased, under its provisions, to bear arms; while the nobles and gentlemen who followed the court, were discharged from the payment of money, on the ground that they continued to perform the military services for which it was intended to be a compensation. But when, after a while, both peer and peasant became liable to be called upon to serve in the armies of the king, nothing could be more unjust than a distinction which was based upon a principle which no longer existed. The nobleman was discharged from tax-paying, because he was liable to be drawn into military service; the people themselves, though they had consented to a tax on condition they should be relieved from bearing arms, were forced, before a great while, to perform the duty, from the obligations of which they had been by contract discharged. The consequence was, that the whole burden of the realm fell on the minor proprietors of the soil, who were forced to pay, not only for their own oppression, but for the extravagance of the overseers who imposed it. The burden it would be difficult to estimate by the ordinary rules of political economy. The lands alone were taxed at one tenth of their value; while every article which they produced, after having been subject to the exactions which the remains of the feudal system placed in the hands of the lord paramount, was brought under the ordeal of a heavy excise. There was no distinction made between what was necessary for every-day use, and for exportation or luxury. Salt was in great demand by the lower classes, as the only relish which they could obtain to flavor their rough food; and therefore, salt became the subject of a heavy impost. If it was discovered that the revenue of the approaching season would be insufficient to meet the expenditures, the court, by an edict of a character so despotic that it is difficult to imagine authority absolute enough to support it, would lower the value of the coin before the tax was collected; and then, when their treasury was rich with the unusual prize, raise it again to its former standard. That vast achievement of fraud and violence, which in a former number we described, and which involved the smaller proprietors of the kingdom in a bankruptcy which pushed them to utter ruin, is the most striking illustration which we can bring forward, of the recklessness of the financial policy of France before the administration of Necker.

It may not be out of place at present, to explain briefly the character of the French tenures, as they existed at the accession of Louis XVI. Who is there, who looks at the masses who sprang up when the first trumpet was sounded, without wondering from what quarter they had come, or under what auspices they had been diverted so totally from that natural love of the soil on which they had grown, and the cottages in

which they had dwelt, which in other countries bears so powerful an influence? The French revolutionist was without a home, and we may say, without a country. He was deprived of a freehold interest in the soil, and was deprived, therefore, of a corporate interest in its welfare. 'That men will be found, under the most favorable circumstances, who will refuse to earn a livelihood by their own industry, or retain that which was transmitted to them by others, there is no doubt; but in France, at the period that preceded the revolution, two thirds of the population were out. casts. They were bankrupt and homeless; and we think that it may be said to have been the leading cause of the convulsion which succeeded, that they who produced it had no means of subsistence, except in the confusion it should afford. With a gigantic effort of despair, they tore up the forest that shaded them, to seek amid its roots the food which should supply their hunger. They were in a condition which has been called inter. mediate between slavery and freedom; but if they were subject to the responsibilities of the latter state, they were equally bound by the restraints of the former. The Metayers, or, as they were named in Latin, the Coloni Partiarü, formed the greater part of the out-door laborers under the old economy; and though their immunities were greater than those of the old English villains, we cannot but believe that in many instances, the superior privileges with which they were intrusted became additional links in their shackles. The great proprietor, though without an absolute ownership of the land, was able, through the possession of the capital with which its stock was to be bought, and its implements to be provided, to reduce its cultivators into vassalage. As the farmer was unable to pay immediately the sum thus borrowed, he bound his land as security through a perpetual rent, by which he stipulated to pay half its produce to the proprietor. "It could never," says Adam Smith, “be the interest of the metayers to lay out, in the further improvement of the land, any part of the little stock which they might save from their own share of the produce, because the lord, who laid out nothing, was to get one half of whatever it produced." The substraction of a tithe from the annual produce of land, has a sensible effect in diminishing the tenant's expenditure for its improvement; and when one half of its value is taken from his hands, he must possess still less disposition to throw the scanty fund that will remain after his immediate expenses are paid, into so barren an investment. It was very natural, therefore, that in a country where five parts out of six of the cultivators held their land by so oppressive a tenure, the landlords found that the land grew yearly more barren, their rents more irregular, and their estates less productive. It may palliate the bitterness of the first insurrectionists, we may be permitted to add, to reflect that they were slaves in every thing but in the exemption from self-support which slavery affords; and that they pressed, like the wolf, to the road-side, from the frozen hills in which they could no longer be nourished, to prolong their existence by a recourse to those primary laws which a state of desperation recalls.

We pass over, as foreign to the subject at present before us, the consideration of French taxation, as finally developed in the reign of Louis XV. We might argue, with Necker, that as the productiveness of the land must vary with the extent of the burdens with which it is laden, and as its political welfare, as well as its commercial existence, must depend upon its productiveness, the extent in which its taxes are imposed must affect, in the