To-day privateering is dead; not by any 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.