6. The time may possibly come when Great Britain, in a war with the despotisms of Europe, might find it to be exceedingly to her interest to employ American sailors on board her privateers, and such a treaty would render this impossible. Why should she unnecessarily bind her hands? 7. The objections of the United States to enter into entangling alliances with European nations. 8. By the law of nations, as expounded both in British and American courts, a commission to a privateer, regularly issued by a belligerent nation, protects both the captain and the crew from punishment as pirates. Would the different commercial nations of the earth be willing to change this law as you propose, especially in regard to the crew? Would it be proper to do so in regard to the latter? After I had stated these objections at some length on Friday, the 17th of March, Lord Clarendon observed that when some of them were stated the day before, they had struck him with so much force after reflection, that he had come to the office from the House of Lords at night and written them down and sent them to Sir James Graham. In his own opinion the treaty ought not to be concluded, and if the cabinet came to this conclusion the affair should drop, and I agreed I would not write to the Department on the subject. If otherwise, and the treaty should be presented to the Government of the United States, then I was to report our conversation. In the conversation Lord Clarendon said they were more solicitous to be on good terms with the United States than any other nation, and that the project had not yet been communicated even to France. (Vide 1 Kent’s Commentaries, 100. United States Statutes at large, 175, Act of March 3d, 1847, to provide for the punishment of piracy in certain cases. Mr. Polk’s message to Congress of December 8, 1846.) General conversation about privateering. The object of the treaty was to change the law of nations in this respect, and Lord Clarendon said that if England, France and the United States should enter into it, the others would soon follow. The project contained a stipulation that the person who took a commission as a privateer should give security that he would not employ any persons as sailors on board who were not subjects or citizens of the nation granting the commission. March 22, 1854. At her majesty’s drawing-room this day, Lord Clarendon told me that they had given up the project of the treaty, etc., etc.