y formal agreement, for the
United States, at the Congress of Paris, refused to agree to its outlawry;
but in our war with Spain no recourse was had to letters of marque by
either combatant, and it seems unlikely that in any future war between
civilized nations either party will court the contempt of the world by
going back to the old custom of chartering banditti to steal the property
of private citizens of the hostile nation if found at sea. Private
property on shore has long been respected by the armies of Christendom,
and why its presence in a ship rather than in a cart makes it a fit object
of plunder baffles the understanding. Perhaps in time the kindred custom
of awarding prize money to naval officers, which makes of them a species
of privateers, and pays them for capturing a helpless merchant ship, while
an army officer gets nothing for taking the most powerful fort, may
likewise be set aside as a relic of medieval warfare.

In its earliest days, of course, privateering was the weapon of a nation
weak at sea against one with a large navy. So when the colonies threw down
the gage of battle to Great Britain, almost the first act of the
Revolutionary government was to authorize private owners to fit out armed
ships to prey on British commerce. Some of the shipowners of New England
had enjoyed some experience of the profits of this peculiar industry in
the Seven Years' War, when quite a number of colonial privateers harried
the French on the seas, and accordingly the response was prompt. In
enterprises of this character the system of profit-sharing, already noted
in connection with whaling, obtained. The owners took a certain share of
each prize, and the remainder was divided among the officers and crew in
certain fixed proportions. How great were the profits accruing to a
privateersman in a "run of luck" might be illustrated by two facts set
forth by Maclay, whose "History of American Privateers" is the chief
authority on the subject. He asserts that "it frequently happened that
even the common sailors received as their share in one cruise, over and
above their wages, one thousand dollars--a small fortune in those days for
a mariner," and further that "one of the boys in the 'Ranger,' who less
than a month before had left a farm, received as his share one ton of
sugar, from thirty to forty gallons of fourth-proof Jamaica rum, some
twenty pounds of cotton, and about the same quantity of ginger, logwood,
and allspice,