Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/461

 charge. Happily, however, for France, there was one port where they were not exacted, and hence this has ever been one of her most flourishing commercial entrepôts.

By a strange anomaly, Marseilles had been, by the law of the 16th December, 1814, as well as by the ordinance of the 19th September, 1777, put out of the pale of the tonnage duty, and made substantially a free port. This exception, the revival of a still older privilege, had been conceded for the purpose of drawing again to Marseilles, as far as possible, the trade of the Mediterranean, which, during the long period of warfare through which France had passed, had been taken possession of by her rivals in that sea, principally, by the Genoese. The Marseillais considered it as a very great advantage; and Cette, besides other ports of the Mediterranean, solicited a like exemption from a duty they justly regarded much more as an evil than a protection; but in vain, till the time when, as will be explained hereafter, the whole of France was admitted to the freedom which had so long been the exclusive privilege of a single port.

The policy of France with regard to her colonies under the first Republic was continued by subsequent Governments, subject, however, to many qualifications and exceptions, by which the system lost much of its uniformity and regularity. But with reference to the treatment of the foreign mercantile marine, the rule excluding alien vessels from the trade between France and the generality of her colonies and possessions was for the most part maintained.