the newspapers
to this date, and have the honor to be, with the greatest esteem and
respect, Sir, your most obedient, humble servant,

Th: Jefferson.

P. S. The last crop of corn in France has been so short, that they
apprehend want. Mr. Necker desires me to make known this scarcity to our
merchants, in hopes they would send supplies. I promised him I would. If
it could be done without naming him, it would be agreeable to him, and
probably advantageous to the adventurers. T. J.

[The annexed are the observations on the subject of admitting our
whale-oil in the markets of France, referred to in the preceding
letter.]

Whale-oil enters, as a raw material, into several branches of
manufacture, as of wool, leather, soap: it is used also in painting,
architecture, and navigation. But its great consumption is in lighting
houses and cities. For this last purpose, however, it has a powerful
competitor in the vegetable oils. These do well in warm, still weather,
but they fix with cold, they extinguish easily with the wind, their crop
is precarious, depending on the seasons, and to yield the same light,
a larger wick must be used, and greater quantity of oil consumed.
Estimating all these articles of difference together, those employed in
lighting cities find their account in giving about twenty-five per
cent, more for whale than for vegetable oils. But higher than this the
whale-oil, in its present form, cannot rise; because it then becomes
more advantageous to the city lighters to use others. This competition,
then, limits its price, higher than which no encouragement can raise it;
and it becomes, as it were, a law of its nature. But, at this low price,
the whale-fishery is the poorest business into which a merchant or
sailor can enter. If the sailor, instead of wages, has a part of what is
taken, he finds that this, one year with another, yields him less than
he could have got as wages in any other business. It is attended, too,
with great risk, singular hardships, and long absence from his family,
if the voyage is made solely at the expense of the merchant, he finds
that, one year with another, it does not reimburse him his expense. As
for example; an English ship of three hundred tons and forty-two hands
brings home, _communibus annis_, after four months' voyage, twenty-five
tons of oil, worth four hundred and thirty-seven pounds ten shillings
sterling. But the wages of the officers and seamen will be four hundred