5453. MONOPOLY, Tobacco.—[further continued]..
Morris's contract for
sixty thousand hogsheads of tobacco has been
concluded with the Farmers General. I have
been for some time occupied in endeavoring 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 minds 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 this
great evil. They are sensible of 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.
When they become so, it will remain to look
about for the best palliative this monopoly can
bear. My present idea is that it will be found
in a prohibition to the Farmers General to purchase
tobacco anywhere but in France.—
To James Ross. Washington ed. i, 560.
Ford ed., iv, 216.
(P.
1786)
