Amount of charges enforced. French fishing vessels, or privateers, and French vessels returning from foreign countries. It amounted to three sous[1] per ton on French vessels of above thirty tons engaged in the coasting trade of the same French sea-board; to four sous per ton, where the trading was from the French ports of one sea to those of another; and to six sous, where the navigation was between France and her colonies or possessions beyond the limits of Europe. On foreign vessels, whencesoever they came, an uniform duty of fifty sous per ton was levied when they discharged their cargoes in French ports.
French and English Navigation Laws equally worthless. Such were the most important provisions of these two stringent laws; they were, however, only similar, in nearly all respects, to those of England, so much so that they have, frequently, been called in France Les Actes de Navigation. Indeed, they were almost as famous, at the time, in that country as the so-called celebrated Acts of Cromwell were in Great Britain—notorious, rather than famous, not for any benefits they conferred on the people of either country, but because the object of each was to cripple the maritime and naval resources of the rival power without enhancing its own; for, in those days, the happiness and prosperity of one nation was supposed to be best promoted by increasing its power of summarily inflicting punishment for any wrongs attributed to its neighbour.
But the absolute rule introduced by the law of the 21st of September, 1793, against the importation into France of foreign produce by foreign vessels except those of the country from which the produce
- ↑ A sou is as nearly as possible one half-penny sterling.
