GEORGE WASHINGTON.
DOCUMENTS.
JANUARY 18, 1791.
The Secretary of State having received from the chargé d'affaires of France a note on the tonnage payable by French vessels in the ports of the United States, has had the same under his consideration, and thereupon makes the following report to the President of the United States:
The chargé d'affaires of France, by a note of the 13th of December, represents, by order of his Court, that they consider so much of the acts of Congress of July 20, 1789 and 1790, as imposes an extraordinary tonnage on foreign vessels without excepting those of France, to be in contravention of the fifth article of the treaty of amity and commerce between the two nations; that this would have authorized on their part a proportional modification in the favors granted to the American navigation, but that his Sovereign had thought it more conformable to his principles of friendship and attachment to the United States to order him to make representations thereon, and to ask in favor of French vessels a modification of the acts which impose an extraordinary tonnage on foreign vessels.
The Secretary of State, in giving in this paper to the President of the United States, thinks it his duty to accompany it with the following observations:
The third and fourth articles of the treaty of amity and commerce between France and the United States subject the vessels of each nation to pay in the ports of the other only such duties as are paid by the most favored nation, and give them reciprocally all the privileges and exemptions in navigation and commerce which are given by either to the most favored nations. Had the contracting parties stopped here, they would have been free to raise or lower their tonnage as they should find it expedient, only taking care to keep the other on the footing of the most favored nation. The question, then, is whether the fifth article cited in the note is anything more than an application of the principle comprised in the third and fourth to a particular object, or whether it is an additional stipulation of something not so comprised.
I. That it is merely an application of a principle comprised in the preceding articles is declared by the express words of the article, to wit: "Dans l'exemption ci-dessus est nommément compris," etc., "in the above exemption is particularly comprised, the imposition of 100 sols per ton established in France on foreign vessels." Here, then, is at once an express declaration that the exemption from the duty of 100 sols is comprised in the third and fourth articles; that is to say, it was one of the exemptions enjoyed by the most favored nations, and as such extended to us by those articles. If the exemption spoken of in this first member of the fifth article was comprised in the third and fourth articles, as is expressly declared, then the reservation by France out of that exemption (which makes the second member of the same article) was also comprised; that is to say, if the whole was comprised, the part was comprised. And if this reservation of France in the second member was comprised in the third and fourth articles, then the counter reservation by the United States (which constitutes the third and last member of the same article) was also comprised, because it is but a corresponding portion of a similar whole on our part, which had been comprised by the same terms with theirs.
In short, the whole article relates to a particular duty of 100 sols, laid by some antecedent law of France on the vessels of foreign nations, relinquished as to the most favored, and consequently to us. It is not a new and additional stipulation, then, but a declared application of the stipulations comprised in the preceding articles to a particular case by way of greater caution.
The doctrine laid down generally in the third and fourth articles, and exemplified specially in the fifth, amounts to this: "The vessels of the most favored nations coming from foreign ports are exempted from the duty of 100 sols; therefore you are exempted from it by the third and fourth articles. The vessels of the most favored nations coming coastwise pay that duty; therefore you are to pay it by the third and fourth articles. We shall not think it unfriendly in you to lay a like duty on coasters, because it will be no more than we have done ourselves. You are free also to lay that or any other duty on vessels coming from foreign ports, provided they apply to all other nations, even the most favored. We are free to do the same under the same restriction. Our exempting you from a duty which the most favored nations do not pay does not exempt you from one which they do pay."