[Extract]

... The importations from America will place in our ports the provisions and goods which England used to carry to the other nations of Europe. Re-exportation will offer to merchants a vast and fresh field for lucrative speculation, the success of which appears assured; and will go to diminish that kind of trade which formed one of the most important branches of the advantages which England reaped from America.

...I do not think that it is necessary to free the American goods from all duties. The favor which they deserve to experience in the present juncture is doubtless great, and you know that I think we should grant them great facilities, but we must distinguish between. those which may be advantageous and those which might serve as a precedent in the future. It is important, from the beginning of this trade, to establish a basis fit to be preserved when events shall have consolidated the independence of the Colonies, and when their trade with us shall have taken a free and regular course. If we grant them total exemption now, this kindness would become bitterness when the necessity arrived to subject them to prestations and curtail the total exemption to which she would be accustomed, and as we should then have more competitors than now, the effect of this return to our principles might be dangerous.

I do not indulge, Sir, in all the details which this discusson might require; your knowledge will supply them; what I have just said will suffice to make you feel the motive which induced me to think that it is important to impose a duty some sort on the importations from America: but I am at the same time of opinion that such duty should be as moderate as possible, that the Americans should be ranked with the most favoured nation, or be subjected to a single and fixed duty of 3%, for example....

...Everyone must shut his eyes to the exportation of munitions and implements of war, and the registers must not contain any item nor any indication of this connivance, entire liberty being left to the Americans to load and export as they please the articles in question.