The eighteenth article of the Treaty of Versailles between England and France contained a provision that commissioners should be appointed on either side to draw up new arrangements of commerce between the two nations on the basis of reciprocity and of mutual convenience, and that these arrangements should be completed within the space of two years, dating from January 1, 1784. The insertion of this article had not been effected without difficulty. The views of France and England as to foreign trade were divergent. The French were what in modern language would be called free traders. Vergennes and his advisers had learnt from the physiocrats that the wealth of a country consisted not so much in the amount of gold and silver which happened to be within its borders at any particular time, as in the natural products of the country itself. The English ministers were to a great extent under the dominion of the mercantile system, which taught that the balance for or against the wealth of one country compared with another lay in the larger amount of cash which one of the countries possessed. Thus, in arranging the conditions of peace, while the French ministers wished for a fresh treaty of commerce with England, the English ministers only desired the renewal of the treaty of commerce of 1713, made at the Peace of Utrecht. This treaty, which never came into complete effect, placed France and England reciprocally on the footing of the most favoured nation, but it was deeply affected by the Methuen treaty between England and Portugal, which gave Portugal a special position towards England superior to that of any nation, how-ever favoured.
