cost of marine insurance. While the statistics in the
possession of the Government are not complete, they show that twenty-five
hundred vessels at least were captured during the War of 1812 by these
privately-owned cruisers, and there can be no shadow of a doubt that the
loss inflicted upon British merchants, and the constant state of
apprehension for the safety of their vessels in which they were kept, very
materially aided in extending among them a willingness to see peace made
on almost any terms.

But this is the other side of the story: The prime purpose of the
privateer was to make money for its owners, its officers, and its crew.
The whole design and spirit of the calling was mercenary. It inflicted
damage on the enemy, but only incidentally to earning dividends for its
participants. If Government cruisers had captured twenty-five hundred
British vessels, those vessels would have been lost to the enemy forever.
But the privateer, seeking gains, tried to send them into port, however
dangerous such a voyage might be, and accordingly, rather more than a
third of them were recaptured by the enemy. We may note here in passing,
that one reason why the so-called Confederate privateers during our own
Civil War, did an amount of damage so disproportionate to their numbers,
was that they were not, in fact, privateers at all. They were commissioned
by the Confederate Government to inflict the greatest possible amount of
injury upon northern commerce, and accordingly, when Semmes or Maffitt
captured a United States vessel, he burned it on the spot. There was no
question of profit involved in the service of the "Alabama," the
"Florida," or the "Shenandoah," and they have been called privateers in
our histories, mainly because Northern writers have been loath to concede,
to what they called a rebel government, the right to equip and commission
regular men-of-war.

But to return to the American privateers of 1812. While, as I have pointed
out, there were many instances of enormous gains being made, it is
probable that the business as a whole, like all gambling businesses as a
whole, was not profitable. Some ships made lucky voyages, but there is on
record in the Navy Department a list of three hundred vessels that took
not one single prize in the whole year of 1813. The records of Congress
show that, as a whole, the business was not remunerative, because there
were constant appeals from people interested. In response to this
i