Letter of John Oitiiicy .-l//a>ns 343 had received advices that much English property had been introduced here under the American flag, and has enjoined upon him a most vigilant attention and a report how the fact in this respect was. The report which was sent by the same courier with my letter I have reason to be- lieve was as favorable so far as concerns Americans as the truth would warrant. The Consul] has declared to me his opinion that every vessel which has arrived this year at Cronstadt 7ctM a cargo under any other than American colours, was loaded on English account. The number of those vessels however amounts only to eleven. As to the Americans he assured me that he fully credited the statement which I made verbally to him in conversation, and that he would report accordingly to his Government. I told him that, independent of any credit which he might be disposed to give me from confidence, he might observe that the interest of my countrymen trading here was impulse enough for them and me to detect as much as we could the counterfeit who came as their competitors in the market, and as to the introduction of English property here, I asked his attention to two facts which in my mind amounted to complete demon- stration that its amount had really been very small. The first was that during the whole season no insurance had been obtainable in London, upon shipments of goods to Russian ports in the Baltic, and the other that the course of exchange had constantly been from fifty to sixty per cent, against England and in favour of Russia. He admitted the weight of these facts, of the first of which he had not been aware ; and he said he should not fail to avail himself of both in his report. Of the American vessels, thirty-three came in ballast, and I presume were either freighted in England, or came here for freights to England. In all these cases the Government here have scarcely wished to look at the Papers. Mr. [Gurieff, the Minister (of) Finance, to whose Department this matter now belongs, once told me in express terms that if a ship came empty he did not care whence she came, and was not inclined to scrutinize what she was.] This disposition obtained admission for the Crescent, though reported by Mr. Harris as irregular, and came very near carrying through the Angerona, when the Captain lost his papers to secure their forgery from detection. [The Ambassador and Consul know very well that these ships that came in ballast will return bound to England for whatever port they may have cleared out. When they have been real Americans I have not felt myself obliged to be more scrupulous in enquiring whence they came than the Russian Government ; it was not my duty to accuse them nor to point them out by any discrimination from the rest. They will] doubtless [return as they came under convoy, and will be in very little danger of capture either by French or Danish privateers. Their freight- ings are certainly profitable to the general mass of our commerce, but I think it necessary to say to you that abuse of our flag is more difficult to detect in their trading than in the case of forgery. I have my suspicions that in more than one instance of those that came this summer, altho' the vessel and papers and even the master and crew were really American,
