I approve much [he said in a letter in 1780 to Charles W. F. Dumas] of the Principles of the Confederacy of the Neutral Powers, and am not only for respecting the Ships as the House of a Friend, tho' containing the Goods of an Enemy, but I even wish for the sake of humanity that the Law of Nations may be further improv'd, by determining, that, even in time of War, all those kinds of People, who are employ'd in procuring subsistence for the Species, or in exchanging the Necessaries or Conveniences of Life, which are for the common Benefit of Mankind, such as Husbandmen on their lands, fishermen in their Barques, and traders in unarm'd Vessels, shall be permitted to prosecute their several innocent and useful Employments without interruption or Molestation, and nothing taken from them, even when wanted by an Enemy, but on paying a fair Price for the same. This principle, as well as a stipulation against privateering, was actually made a part of the treaty of amity and commerce between Prussia and the United States, which was signed shortly before Franklin returned to America from the French Mission, and it was not for the lack of effort on his part that similar articles were not inserted in all the treaties between the United States and other European countries that were entered into about the same time. For the practice of privateering he cherished a feeling of intense abhorrence. It behoved merchants, he wrote to Benjamin Vaughan, "to consider well of the justice of a War, before they voluntarily engage a Gang of Ruffians to attack their Fellow Merchants of a neighbouring Nation, to plunder them of their Property, and perhaps ruin them and their Families, if they yield it; or to wound, maim, or murder them, if they endeavour to defend it. Yet these Things are done by Christian Merchants, whether a War be just or unjust; and it can hardly be just on both sides. They are done by English and American Merchants, who, nevertheless, complain of private Thefts, and hang by Dozens the Thieves they have taught by their own Example." Rarely have the injurious results of privateering been presented with more force than they were by Franklin in his _Propositions Relative to Privateering_, sent to Richard Oswald--the industrial loss involved in the withdrawal of so many men from honest labor, "who, besides, spend what they get in riot, drunkenness, and debauchery, lose their habits of industry, are rarely fit for any sober business after a peace, and serve only to increase the number of highwaymen and housebreakers"; and the pecuniary ruin into which their employers are drawn by inability, after the enjoyment of rapidly acquired wealth, to adjust the habits formed by it to normal conditions. "A just punishment," Franklin adds, "for their having wantonly and unfeelingly ruined many honest, innocent traders and their families, whose subsistence was employed