The exact reciprocity stipulated in the preceding articles, and
which pervades every part of the treaty, ensures a counter right to each
party for every right ceded to the other.
Let it be further considered, that the duty called tonnage, in the
United States, is in lieu of the duties for anchorage, for the support
of buoys, beacons, and light-houses, to guide the mariner into harbor
and along the coast, which are provided and supported at the expense of
the United States, and for fees to measurers, weighers, guagers, &c,
who are paid by the United States; for which articles, among many others
(light excepted), duties are paid by us in the ports of France, under
their specific names. That government has hitherto thought these duties
consistent with the treaty; and consequently, the same duties under a
general instead of specific names, with us, must be equally consistent
with it: it is not the name, but the thing, which is essential. If we
have renounced the right to lay any port duties, they must be understood
to have equally renounced that of either laying new or continuing the
old. If we ought to refund the port duties received from their vessels
since the date of the act of Congress, they should refund the port
duties they have received from our vessels since the date of the treaty,
for nothing short of this is the reciprocity of the treaty.
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