No. 186.
Sir
Edward Thornton to Mr. Fish.
Sir: With reference to my note of the 20th ultimo, and to yours of the 7th instant, of which I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt, I regret that I should not have conveyed more clearly the nature of the representation which I was instructed by Lord Granville to submit to you, with regard to the payment of tonnage-dues in ports of the United States by steamers carrying the English flag and belonging to regular lines plying between the two countries.
I did not certainly mean to signify that complaint has been made to Her Majesty’s government of a discrimination between the vessels of the United States and those of Great Britain in this respect adverse to Great Britain.
Her Majesty’s government has been given to understand that in consequence of the provisions of the IVth article of the treaty of July 17, 1858, between the United States and Belgium, a regular line of steamers now plying between the two countries has been exempted from the payment of tonnage-dues in the ports of the United States, and that, for a similar reason, the same exemption has been granted to a line of steamers from Bremen to the United States.
It was therefore the advantage over British lines of steamers enjoyed by steamers to which the above-mentioned exemption is granted, which I desired to point out to you in my note of the 20th ultimo.
It is consequently as a matter of comity, and on the principle generally observed by the United States, of granting equal commercial advantages to all foreign nations, that Her Majesty’s government hopes that the Government of the United States may think it right to grant to British shipping interests a similar exemption from the payment of tonnage-dues to that now accorded to certain foreign ship-owners under the treaty engagements of their respective countries, especially when it is considered that no tonnage-dues of the same kind are levied in the ports of the United Kingdom.
I have, &c.,