in America, and particularly at The Havannah,
are more to be desired than expected. It can therefore only be
recommended to the best endeavors of the commissioners to obtain them.
It will be something to obtain for our vessels, flour, etc., admission
to those ports during their pleasure. In like manner, if they could be
prevailed on to reestablish our right of cutting logwood in the Bay of
Campeachy on the footing on which it stood before the treaty of 1763,
it would be desirable and not endanger to us any contest with the
English, who by the revolution treaty are restrained to the
southeastern parts of Yucatan.

Article 31. The _act_ of ratification on our part may require a
twelvemonth from the date of the treaty, as the Senate meets regularly
but once a year; and to return it to Madrid for _exchange_ may require
four months more.

The treaty must not exceed ---- years' duration, except the clauses
relating to boundary and the navigation of the Mississippi, which must
be perpetual and final. Indeed, these two subjects had better be in a
separate instrument.

There might have been mentioned a third species of arrangement--that
of making special agreements on every special subject of commerce,
and of settling a tariff of duty to be paid on each side on every
particular article; but this would require in our commissioners a
very minute knowledge of our commerce, as it is impossible to foresee
every proposition of this kind which might be brought into discussion
and to prepare them for it by information and instruction from hence.
Our commerce, too, is as yet rather in a course of experiment, and
the channels in which it will ultimately flow are not sufficiently
known to enable us to provide for it by special agreement; nor
have the exigencies of our new Government as yet so far developed
themselves as that we can know to what degree we may or must have
recourse to commerce for the purposes of revenue. No common
consideration, therefore, ought to induce us as yet to arrangements
of this kind. Perhaps nothing should do it with any nation short
of the privileges of natives in all their possessions, foreign and
domestic.

It were to be wished, indeed, that some positively favorable
stipulations respecting our grain, flour, and fish could be obtained,
even on our giving reciprocal advantages to some of the commodities
of Spain, say her wines and