5045. MANUFACTURES, State aid to.—
The House of Delegates of Virginia seemed
disposed to adventure £2,500 for the establishing
a woollen manufactory in Virginia, but the
Senate did not concur. By their returning to
the subject, however, at a subsequent session,
and wishing more specific propositions, it is
probable they might be induced to concur, if
they saw a certain provision that their money
would not be paid for nothing. Some unsuccessful
experiments heretofore may have suggested
this caution. Suppose the propositions
brought into some such shape as this: The
undertaker is to contribute £1,000, the State
£2,500, viz.: the undertaker having laid out his
£1,000 in the necessary implements to be
brought from Europe, and these being landed
in Virginia as a security that he will proceed,
let the State pay for the first necessary purpose
then to occur £1,000.
Let it pay him a stipend of £100 a year for the
first three years |
£300 |
Let it give him a bounty (suppose one-third)
on every yard of woollen cloth equal to good
plains, which he shall weave for five years,
not exceeding £250 a year (20,000 yards) the
four first years, and £200 the fifth |
1,200 |
|
£2,500 |
To every workman whom he shall import, let
them give, after he shall have worked in the
manufactory five years, warrants for—acres
of land, and pay the expenses of survey, patents,
&c. (This last article is to meet the proposition
of the undertaker. I do not like it, because it
tends to draw off the manufacturer from his
trade. I should better like a premium to him
on his continuance in it; as, for instance, that
he should be free from State taxes as long as
he should carry on his trade.)
The President's intervention seems necessary
till the contracts shall be concluded. It is presumed
he would not like to be embarrassed
afterwards with the details of superintendence.
Suppose, in his answer to the Governor of Virginia,
he should say that the undertaker being
in Europe, more specific propositions cannot be
obtained from him in time to be laid before this
assembly; that in order to secure to the State
the benefits of the establishment, and yet guard
them against an unproductive grant of money,
he thinks some plan like the preceding one
might be proposed to the undertaker. That as
it is not known whether he would accept it exactly
in that form, it might disappoint the views
of the State were they to prescribe that or any
other form rigorously, consequently that a discretionary
power must be given to a certain
extent. That he would willingly cooperate with
their Executive in effecting the contract, and
certainly would not conclude it on any terms
worse for the State than those before explained,
and that the contracts being once concluded, his
distance and other occupations would oblige
him to leave the execution open to the Executive
of the State.—
Official Opinion.
Washington ed. vii, 460.
(1790)
