There is no indication that Vergennes resented in any way Jefferson's suggestion; but there is no evidence either that he paid any attention to it. Things remained in the same condition to the end of the year. Up to that date, Lafayette had fought as a free lance the commercial battle of the United States, using his personal influence and family connections to undermine the prestige of the Farmers-general. At the beginning of 1786, Calonne, yielding to his solicitations, formed the Comité du Commerce composed of Farmers-general, inspectors of commerce, and members of the council, in order to study the future of the commercial relations between France and the United States. Lafayette was appointed to the committee on February 9, 1786. He had very little training in economics and had never displayed any particular aptitude for financial problems. But back of him was Jefferson, and on the committee Lafayette was nothing but the spokesman of the American Plenipotentiary. The account of his speeches before the committee, given by Brissot, and reprinted in a note to the "Memoirs of General Lafayette", is simply the résumé of a letter sent by Jefferson to Vergennes six months earlier. Jefferson prompted him, furnished him with figures and statistics, and in a letter written at the eleventh hour urged him to expose the fundamental dishonesty of the Farmers-general. Since, according to their own figures, said Jefferson, they lose annually over four million livres by the farming of tobacco "the king, in favor to them, should discontinue the bail; and they cannot ask its continuance without acknowledging they have given in a false state of quantities and sums."[124] Standing alone in the committee against a strong combination of skilled financiers, Lafayette was fighting for a lost cause without any profit to himself or any visible hope of success.[125] Both Lafayette and Jefferson were outmaneuvered by the financiers. They professed that they were willing to denounce their contracts with the London merchants, and thus seemed to accomplish a grand patriotic gesture, but they granted to the American financier, Robert Morris, the exclusive privilege of buying tobacco for them and thus defeated the main purpose of Jefferson. The minister had to confess that he was beaten, although he had spared no pains to strike at the root of the monopoly. "The persons interested in it are too powerful to be opposed, even by the interest of the whole country."[126]