Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/473

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evidence, reported that great changes were imperatively required in the laws, their recommendations did not receive the sanction of the French legislative chambers until 1866, and then only after many prolonged discussions.

Among these difficulties may be mentioned the removal of certain local charges on shipping, which had long been maintained in our ports, and against the payment of which the French Government had frequently protested, though neither the vessels of France nor of other countries were called upon to pay more than those of our own, except in some special cases, such as the case of ships owned by freemen, and other locally privileged persons, who were exempt. These charges differed in every port, and sometimes within the limit of the same harbour. Some of them were levied by virtue of Acts of Parliament, but others of a vexatious character, though trifling in amount, were only claimed by a prescriptive right, through long user. Those which were levied by prescription were either in the nature of petty customs, or of duties charged on vessels for anchorage, keelage, or with respect to ballast or to fees levied on goods in the nature of cranage, metage, cartage, wharfage; and, in too many instances, they were extorted for the use of cranes which had no existence, or of wharves which for ages had tumbled into decay. No doubt, in ancient times, it was an unquestioned prerogative of the Crown to create petty customs for local purposes, and, though that