5738. NAVIGATION, Reciprocity and.—
The following principles, being founded in reciprocity, appear perfectly just, and to offer
no cause of complaint to any nation:
Where a nation refuses to receive in our
vessels any productions but our own, we May
refuse to receive, in theirs, any but their own
productions. Where a nation refuses to consider
any vessel as ours which has not been
built within our territories, we should refuse
to consider as theirs, any vessel not built
within their territories. Where a nation refuses
to our vessels the carriage even of our
own productions, to certain countries under
their domination, we might refuse to theirs of
every description, the carriage of the same
productions to the same countries. But as
justice and good neighborhood would dictate
that those who have no part in imposing
the restriction on us, should not be the victims
of measures adopted to defeat its effect,
it may be proper to confine the restriction
to vessels owned or navigated by any
subjects of the same dominant power, other
than the inhabitants of the country to which
the said productions are to be carried. And
to prevent all inconvenience to the said inhabitants,
and to our own, by too sudden a
check on the means of transportation, we
may continue to admit the vessels marked
for future exclusion, on an advanced tonnage,
and for such length of time only, as
may be supposed necessary to provide against
that inconvenience. The establishment of
some of these principles by Great Britain,
alone, has already lost us in our commerce
with that country and its possessions, between
eight and nine hundred vessels of near
40,000 tons burden, according to statements
from official materials, in which they have
confidence. This involves a proportional loss
of seamen, shipwrights, and ship-building,
and is too serious a loss to admit forbearance
of some effectual remedy.—
Report on Commerce and Navigation. Washington ed. vii, 648.
Ford ed., vi, 481.
(Dec. 1793)
