‘Industry or manufactures, and internal trade, made immense progress during my reign. The application of chemistry to the manufactures, caused them to advance with giant strides. I gave an impulse, the effects of which, extended throughout Europe.
‘Foreign trade, which, in its results, is infinitely inferior to agriculture, was an object of subordinate importance in my mind. Foreign trade is made for agriculture and home industry, and not the two latter for the former. The interests of these three fundamental cases are diverging and frequently conflicting. I always promoted them in their natural gradation, but I could not and ought not to have ranked them all on an equality. Time will unfold what I have done, the national resources which I created, and the emancipation from the English which I brought about. We have now the secret of the commercial treaty of 1783. France still exclaims against its author; but the English demanded it on pain of resuming the war. They wished to do the same after the treaty of Amiens, but I was then all-powerful; I was a hundred cubits high. I replied, that if they were in possession of the heights of Montmartre I would still refuse to sign the treaty. These words were echoed through Europe.
‘The English will now impose some such treaty on France, at least, if popular clamor and the opposition of the mass of the nation, do not force them to draw back. This thraldom would be an additional disgrace in the eyes of that nation, which is now beginning to acquire a just perception of her own interests.
‘When I came to the head of the government, the American ships, which were permitted to enter our ports on the score of their neutrality, brought us raw materials, and had the impudence to sail from France without freight, for the purpose of taking in cargoes of English goods in London. They, moreover, had the insolence to make their payments, when they had any to make, by giving bills on persons in London. Hence the vast profits reaped by the English manufacturers and brokers, entirely to our prejudice. I made a law that no American should import goods to any amount, without immediately exporting their exact equivalent. A loud outcry was raised against this: it was said that I had ruined trade. But what was the consequence? Notwithstanding the closing of my ports, and in spite of the English, who ruled the seas, the Americans returned and submitted to my regulations. What might I not have done under more favorable circumstances?
‘Thus I naturalized in France the manufacture of cotton, which includes,
‘First, spun cotton. We did not previously spin it ourselves; the English supplied us with it, as a sort of favor.
‘Secondly, the web. We did not yet make it; it came to us from abroad.
‘Thirdly, the printing. This was the only part of the manufacture that we performed ourselves. I wished to naturalize the two first branches; and I proposed to the council of state, that their importation should be prohibited. This excited great alarm. I sent for Oberkamp, and I conversed with him a long time. I learned from him, that this prohibition would doubtless produce a shock, but that, after a year or two of perseverance, it would prove a triumph, whence we should derive immense advantages. Then I issued my decree in spite of all; this was a true piece of statesmanship.
‘I at first confined myself merely to prohibiting the web; then I extended the prohibition to spun cotton; and we now possess, within ourselves, the three branches of the cotton manufacture, to the great benefit of our population, and the injury and regret of the English; which proves that, in civil government, as well as in war, decision of character is often indispensable to success.’
I will trouble the committee with only one other quotation, which I shall make from Lowe; and from hearing which, the committee must share with me in the mortification which I felt on perusing it. That author says, ‘it is now above forty years since the United States of America were definitely separated from us,and since, their situation has afforded a proof that the benefit of mercantile intercourse may be retained, in all its extent, without the care of governing, or the expense of defending, these once regretted provinces.’ Is there not too much truth in this observation? By adhering to the foreign policy, which I have been discussing, do we not remain essentially British, in every thing but the form of our government? Are not our interests, our industry, our commerce, so modified as to swell British pride, and to increase British power?