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I recommend that Congress should immediately provide by law for the trial and punishment as pirates of Spanish subjects who, escaping the vigilance of their Government, shall be found guilty of privateering against the United States. I do not apprehend serious danger from these privateers. Our Navy will be constantly on the alert to protect our commerce.
It was he who inaugurated that privateering warfare by which the English, and later on the Dutch, were destined to inflict much injury upon the Spaniards. And the large profits accruing to him from it, encouraged his contemporaries, and gave birth in their minds to the love for long and hazardous voyages.
To a great extent however it was absorbed in privateering which combined with its attractions in the way of mere adventure the advantages of being profitable, patriotic, and pious.
Despite the efficiency and numbers of American privateers, it was not British commerce, but American, that was destroyed by the war. From Newport the "Rossie" took a turn through another lucrative field of privateering enterprise, the Caribbean Sea.
Privateering opened a channel by which these disorderly spirits, impatient of the sober and laborious life of the planter, found an employment agreeable to their tastes. An example had been set by the plundering expeditions sent out by Fortescue, Brayne and Doyley, and when these naval excursions ceased, the sailors and others who had taken part in them fell to robbing on their private account.
We may even, in our sympathy, endeavor to forget what country it was that proposed to defy the agreements of the Conference of Paris and the general judgment of nations by resorting to privateering, or what country it was that preferred to risk becoming an asylum for the criminals of a continent rather than revive, even temporarily, that basic and elementary implement of modern international justice, an extradition treaty, which had been in force with acceptable results for over twenty years.
But the favorite rig for a privateer was that of the top-sail schooner, such a rig as the "Enterprise" carried during the war with France. The famous shipyards of Baltimore turned out scores of clean-cut, clipper-built schooners, with long, low hulls and raking masts, which straightway took to the ocean on privateering cruises.
But during the period of the Revolution privateering did the struggling young nation two services it sorely harassed the enemy, and it kept alive the seafaring zeal and skill of the New Englanders. For a time it seemed that not all this zeal and skill could replace the maritime interests where they were when the Revolution began.
The continuance of such a course for even a short time would suffice entirely to ruin Caere, Ostia, Neapolis, Tarentum, and Syracuse, while the Carthaginians easily consoled themselves for the loss of the tribute of Sicily with the contributions which they levied and the rich prizes of their privateering.
The question was amply debated; but as, on the one hand, little doubt was felt about the rapid conquest of Canada by militia and volunteers, so, on the other, the same disposition to trust to extemporized irregular forces encouraged reliance simply upon privateering.
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