Memorandum from Tench Coxe, [before 5 February 1793?]
Memorandum from Tench Coxe
[before 5 Feb. 1793?]
[…]1
10
To abolish the drawbacks of the foreign or impost duty upon all manufactures from grain, upon butter, cheese, wet provisions, oil, whalebone, fish. (Quere, also the manufactures from wood).
11
To abolish the draw backs of the foreign or impost Duty upon all manufactures necessary in the building, equipping, or repairing of merchant Vessels and Ships of war (or at least certain of them) such as Sail cloth Cordage, anchors, sheathing paper, gun powder, cartridge paper.2
12
To prohibit foreign Ships from carrying from hence to foreign ports, other than their own, any foreign goods wares or merchandize.3
MS (DLC: TJ Papers, 234: 42049); consisting of a one-page fragment in Coxe’s hand, lacking sections 1–9, with notations by TJ recorded below; undated, but presumably written sometime before Coxe to TJ, 5 Feb. 1793.
Coxe’s memorandum may have been related to the second state of TJ’s Report on Commerce, printed above under 16 Dec. 1793, even though TJ did not make there the revision recorded in note 2 below.
1. Estimated three pages missing.
2. TJ here wrote “The objects of the 10th. and 11th. as also the duty on fish will be covered by the insertion pa. 17. line 3. of the words ‘such articles as we produce ourselves.’ For in proceeding to lay duties on manufactures from grain, &c. sailcloth &c. drawbacks will naturally be first withdrawn.”
3. TJ inserted a check mark at the beginning of this sentence and here wrote “Qu? We cannot expect to force them out of that principle of their navigation act which prohibits all nations from carrying productions not their own. Consequently the only effect of this measure would be to deprive ourselves of the transportation from the place of produce to this country.”