MR. SUMNER. I wish the treaty had been such as to afford a stronger example; but it must be accepted as the judgment of our country at that time; and to my mind it is a practical denunciation of privateering, worthy of the illustrious character by whom it was negotiated, who was none other than Benjamin Franklin. But this treaty is not all. I do not forget how Jefferson wrote to France, “The benevolence of this proposition is worthy of the nation from which it comes, and our sentiments on it have been declared in the treaty to which you are pleased to refer, as well as in some others which have been proposed,”[143] thus testifying to our treaty and to his own sentiments; and, at a later day, that John Quincy Adams, in his instructions to Mr. Rush, of July 28, 1823, directing him to negotiate a treaty with Great Britain for the abolition of privateering, declared that this was “an object which has long been dear to the hearts and ardent in the aspirations of the benevolent and the wise, an object essentially congenial to the true spirit of Christianity”; and he adopted the earlier declaration of Franklin, “It is time, it is high time, for the sake of humanity, that a stop were put to this enormity.”[144] MR. GRIMES. I am speaking now of the declaration which the Senator has seen fit to designate as a national denunciation of privateers, made in 1785, though the Constitution, which was made in 1787, expressly reserved to Congress the power to issue letters of marque and reprisal. Taking these two facts, the treaty made in 1785 and the Constitution made in 1787, how can it be asserted that the ancient policy of the Government is against privateering, and that we have nationally denounced it?