The Sun.
London, England, 1866-12-31 00:00:00

Abolition of French Tonnage Dues.

The ifoniteur of Saturday published the follow-
ing Report from M. Behie, the Minister of Com-
merce, to the Emperor :

"Paris, Dec. 27.

- - .
" Sire,—The law of the 19th of May, 1866, upon
the mercantile marine suppresses in principle ton-
nage dues in all the ports of the Empire from. the
Ist of January, 1867, and only retains exceptionally
their collection in the cases of those vessels belong-
ing to nations which in their ports subject French
ships to differential tonnage dues—that is charges
from which their own vessels are exempted. Under
the influence of the legislation now in force, and
previously to the law of the 19th of May,
,
tonnage dues in French ports are differential—that
foreign
is to say, they are only levied upon 1866, the
vessels,
while French vessels are not liable to them. The
navigation treaties which France has concluded
with different maritime Powers have generally had
the effect of according to the vessels belonging to
those Powers the national treatment—that is, to
immunity from tonnage dues. But certain of these
Powers levied tonnage rates at home not only upon
foreign vessels but also upon their own vessels, so
that in reciprocally granting to us in their countries
the national treatment, they gave us less than they
received, our vessels having to continue paying ton-
their ports, while their ships were
nage dues in
exempt therefrom in ours.
ig For this reason the treaties iu question stipu-
lated,
with regard to countries placed in this situa-
tion, the payment of a special tonnage duty, called
compensation tax. we have even gone so far as to
have the compensation-tax paid in France not only
to English ships, but to French ships themselves and
those of all assimilated nations coming from England.

" Your Majesty's Government has asked itself
whether this complicated system ought to subsist in
presence of the precise terms of the law of the 19th
of May, 1866, and of the liberality of the doctrines
which have guided the drawing up of that law ; and
it has taken into consideration whether, with regard
to Powers allied to us by special maritime conventions,
there was room to subordinate the immunity granted
by the new mercantile marine system, not only to
the abolition of all differential tonnage dues in the
ports of those Powers, but to the abolition of the
duties of the same kind which they levy upon their
own navigation, so that freedom should be every-
where absolute and reciprocal.
"Au attentive examination has led us to decide
this question in the negative.
" Upon the one hand, in fact, the stipulations of
the law of May 19, 1866, arc conclusive in spirit as
in letter, to show that freedom from tonnage duty in
French ports ought to be complete, dating from the
Ist of January next, save with regard to nations
which impose differential taxes upon our navigation
in their waters.

It is to be remarked, indeed, that the interest
of foreign nations is not the nature of the tonnage
dues abolition, but certainly the interest of French
maritime commerce, which has everything to gain
by seeing the greatest possible competition of the
ships of all nations drawn into our ports by intelli-
gent liberties.

" From another point of view if in conformity