If this construction be adopted, then each party has for ever renounced
the right of laying any duties on the vessels of the other coming
from any foreign port, or more than one hundred sols on those coming
coastwise. Could this relinquishment be confined to the two contracting
parties alone, its effect would be calculable. But the exemption
once conceded by the one nation to the other, becomes immediately
the property of all others who are on the footing of the most favored
nations. It is true, that those others would be obliged to yield the
same compensation, that is to say, to receive our vessels duty free.
Whether France and the United States would gain or lose in the exchange
of the measure with them, is not easy to say.
Another consequence of this construction will be, that the vessels of
the most favored nations, paying no duties, will be on a better footing
than those of natives, which pay a moderate duty: consequently, either
the duty on these also must be given up, or they will be supplanted by
foreign vessels in our own ports.
The resource, then, of duty on vessels, for the purposes either of
revenue or regulation, will be for ever lost to both. It is
hardly conceivable that either party, looking forward to all these
consequences, would see their interest in them.
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