I am, with respect, etc.,

L.G.  OTTO.

[Translation.]

L.G.  Otto to the Secretary of State.

PHILADELPHIA, December 13, 1790.

NOTE.—­The underwritten, charge d’affaires of France, has received the express order of his Court to represent to the United States that the act passed by Congress the 20th July, 1789, and renewed the 20th July of the present year, which imposes an extraordinary tonnage on foreign vessels without excepting French vessels, is directly contrary to the spirit and to the object of the treaty of commerce which unites the two nations, and of which His Majesty has not only scrupulously observed the tenor, but of which he has extended the advantages by many regulations very favorable to the commerce and navigation of the United States.

By the fifth article of this treaty the citizens of these States are declared exempt from the tonnage duty imposed in France on foreign vessels, and they are not subject to that duty but in the coasting business.  Congress has reserved the privilege of establishing a duty equivalent to this last, a stipulation founded on the state in which matters were in America at the time of the signature of the treaty.  There did not exist at that epoch any duty on tonnage in the United States.

It is evident that it was the nonexistence of this duty and the motive of a perfect reciprocity stipulated in the preamble of the treaty that had determined the King to grant the exemption contained in the article fifth; and a proof that Congress had no intention to contravene this reciprocity is that it only reserves a privilege of establishing on the coasting business a duty equivalent to that which is levied in France.  This reservation would have been completely useless if by the words of the treaty Congress thought themselves at liberty to lay any tonnage they should think proper on French vessels.

The undersigned has the honor to observe that this contravention of the fifth article of the treaty of commerce might have authorized His Majesty to modify proportionately the favors granted by the same article to the American navigation; but the King, always faithful to the principles of friendship and attachment to the United States, and desirous of strengthening more and more the ties which subsist so happily between the French nation and these States, thinks it more conformable to these views to order the undersigned to make representations on this subject, and to ask in favor of French vessels a modification of the act which imposes an extraordinary tonnage on foreign vessels.  His Majesty does not doubt but that the United States will acknowledge the justice of this claim, and will be disposed to restore things to the footing on which they were at the signature of the treaty of the 6th February, 1778.

L.G.  OTTO.

[Translation.]

L.G.  Otto to the Secretary of State.