Thomas Jefferson, the Apostle of Americanism

by Gilbert Chinard

There is no indication that Vergennes resented in any way Jefferson's suggestion; but there is no evidence either that he paid any attention to it. Things remained in the same condition to the end of the year. Up to that date, Lafayette had fought as a free lance the commercial battle of the United States, using his personal influence and family connections to undermine the prestige of the Farmers-general. At the beginning of 1786, Calonne, yielding to his solicitations, formed the Comité du Commerce composed of Farmers-general, inspectors of commerce, and members of the council, in order to study the future of the commercial relations between France and the United States. Lafayette was appointed to the committee on February 9, 1786. He had very little training in economics and had never displayed any particular aptitude for financial problems. But back of him was Jefferson, and on the committee Lafayette was nothing but the spokesman of the American Plenipotentiary. The account of his speeches before the committee, given by Brissot, and reprinted in a note to the "Memoirs of General Lafayette", is simply the résumé of a letter sent by Jefferson to Vergennes six months earlier. Jefferson prompted him, furnished him with figures and statistics, and in a letter written at the eleventh hour urged him to expose the fundamental dishonesty of the Farmers-general. Since, according to their own figures, said Jefferson, they lose annually over four million livres by the farming of tobacco "the king, in favor to them, should discontinue the bail; and they cannot ask its continuance without acknowledging they have given in a false state of quantities and sums."[124]

Standing alone in the committee against a strong combination of skilled financiers, Lafayette was fighting for a lost cause without any profit to himself or any visible hope of success.[125]

Both Lafayette and Jefferson were outmaneuvered by the financiers. They professed that they were willing to denounce their contracts with the London merchants, and thus seemed to accomplish a grand patriotic gesture, but they granted to the American financier, Robert Morris, the exclusive privilege of buying tobacco for them and thus defeated the main purpose of Jefferson. The minister had to confess that he was beaten, although he had spared no pains to strike at the root of the monopoly. "The persons interested in it are too powerful to be opposed, even by the interest of the whole country."[126]

But it was not in his character ever to give up; he soon renewed the attack at another point. First he succeeded in postponing for six months the effect of the new lease to Morris, and thus permitted American importers who had accumulated stocks in Lorient to sell them directly to the Farmers-general. Some time later he partially nullified the concession to Morris by obtaining an order from the council "obliging the Farmers-general to purchase from such other merchants as shall offer fifteen thousand hogshead of tobacco", and to grant to the sellers in other respects the same terms as they had granted Robert Morris.

Thus, indirectly but very effectively, Jefferson finally achieved his purpose: to undermine an odious monopoly which caused a great loss to the planters of his country; to enable the American consumers to buy directly from France manufactured products, or at least those "commodities which it is more advantageous to us to buy here than in England, or elsewhere"; finally "to reinforce the motives for a friendship from this country towards ours.—This friendship we ought to cultivate closely, considering the present dispositions of England towards us."[127]

In addition, he flattered himself that he had taught the French some sound economic principles:

I have been for some time occupied in endeavouring to destroy the root of the evils which the tobacco trade encounters in this country, by making the ministers sensible that merchants will not bring a commodity to a market, where but one person is allowed to buy it; and that so long as that single purchaser is obliged to go to foreign markets for it, he must pay for it in coin and not in commodities. These truths have made their way to the mind of the ministry insomuch, as to have delayed the execution of the new lease of the farms, six months. It is renewed, however, for three years, but so as not to render impossible a reformation of the great evil. They are sensible to the evil, but it is so interwoven with their fiscal system, that they find it hazardous to disentangle. The temporary distress, too, of the revenue, they are not prepared to meet. My hopes, therefore, are weak, though not quite desperate.[128]

One might well wonder to what extent these "truths" were as new to the French as Jefferson seemed to believe, and to what extent he was operative in strengthening the opposition to the Farmers-general, already very strong in France. However that may be, the American minister learned from the French example as much as he taught the members of the committee. The tobacco monopoly was to him another object lesson on the danger of farming taxes, and he did not forget it.

Even greater obstacles were encountered by Jefferson and Lafayette in their effort to develop commercial transactions with New England. The negotiations extended over three years and would be worth relating in detail.[129] Jefferson, bent on breaking customs barriers and obtaining free entrance for the products of New England fisheries, brought forward every possible argument to fight the doctrine of commercialism and summed up his case in a letter sent to Lafayette, but evidently intended for the committee. There for the first time he pointed out the necessary connection existing between the tariff question and the repayment of the French debt. The problem of "transfers" is not a new one, and Jefferson's reasoning sounds strangely familiar to all those who have paid any attention to our present problems of debt settlement, reparations, and tariff. The following passage seems particularly worth quoting: