TO JAMES ROSS.

Paris, May 8, 1786.

Dear Sir,

I have duly received your favor of October the 22nd, and am much
gratified by the communications therein made. It has given me details,
which do not enter into the views of my ordinary correspondents, and
which are very entertaining. I experience great satisfaction at seeing
my country proceed to facilitate the intercommunications of its several
parts, by opening rivers, canals, and roads. How much more rational is
this disposal of public money, than that of waging war.

Before the receipt of your letter, Morris's contract for sixty thousand
hogsheads of tobacco was 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