tonnage duty

On the other hand, when Tucker questioned how lighthouses would be supported if Congress did not assess a tonnage duty to do so, one thing was certainly true.

9 1789, reprinted in 10 DHFFC, supra note 33, at 12 (noting the differing interests states had respecting tonnage duties, and threatening vote against Madison's resolution if the tonnage duty were "persisted in"); GEORGE C.

at 488-89 (arguing that a high foreign tonnage duty was needed in order to have something "to give up to Britain when she is willing to enter into [a] treaty"); Mr.

Of course, one answer to that predicament would have been for Congress to give consent to the states to charge a tonnage duty. Although Tucker eventually pushed for that very solution during debate on the Lighthouse Act, he did not raise that possibility during the tonnage debate.

Second on the shipwrights' list was a proposal "to encourage the Increase of American Shipping" by laying no tonnage duty on American ships "except for the support of Bays [Buoys] & Lighthouses." Petition of the Shipwrights of Philadelphia, May 25, 1789, reprinted in 8 DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE FIRST FEDERAL CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES: PETITION HISTORIES AND NONLEGISLATIVE OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS 348-49 (Kenneth R.

(64) Tucker's motion was paraphrased in the THE DAILY ADVERTISER: The principle of this was to place the establishment both of lighthouse and pilots in the hands and under the controul of the state government, the former to be supported by the appropriation of a certain proportion of the duty on tonnage of vessels, not exceeding six cents per ton--and in case that were insufficient, that each state should have power to lay an additional tonnage duty on all vessels entering the ports where such houses were erected, and that pilots should be under the direction of the states.