These facts suffice to dispel the wonder we might otherwise feel at the love our ancestors had for mixing themselves up, for any pretext or for none, in hostilities with Continental Powers. Our policy was naturally spirited, when it meant chances like these for all who lacked either the wit or the will to live honestly, and returns like these on the capital invested in the patriotic equipment of a few privateers. But what advantage ultimately accrued to either side, after deduction made for all losses and expenses, or how far these national piracies contributed to the speedier restoration of peace, were questions that apparently did not enter within the range of military reasoning to consider. Everything was done to make attractive a life of piracy spent in the service of the State. Originally every European State claimed some interest in the prizes it commissioned its privateers to take; but the fact that each in turn surrendered its claim proves the difficulty there was in getting these piratical servants to submit their plunder to the adjudication of the prize-courts. Originally all privateers were bound to deliver captured arms and ammunition to their sovereign, and to surrender a percentage of their gains to the State or the admiral; but it soon came to pass that sovereigns had to pay for the arms they might wish to keep, and that the percentage deducted was first diminished and then abolished altogether. At first 30 per cent. was deducted in Holland, which fell successively to 18 per cent., to 10 per cent., to nothing; and in England the 10 per cent. originally due to the admiral was finally surrendered.[76] The crew also enjoyed an additional prize of money for every person slain or captured on an enemy’s man-of-war or privateer, and for every cannon in proportion to its bore.[77] Of all the changes of opinion that have occurred in the world’s history, none is more instructive than that which gradually took place concerning privateering, and which ended in its final renunciation by most of the maritime Powers in the Declaration of Paris in 1856. The weight of the publicists’ authority was for long in its favour. Vattel only made the proviso of a just cause of war the condition for reconciling privateering with the comfort of a good conscience.[78] Valin defended it as a patriotic service, in that it relieved the State from the expense of fitting out war-vessels. Emerigon denounced the vocation of pirates as infamous, while commending that of privateers as honest and even glorious. And for many generations the distinction between the two was held to be satisfactory, that the privateer acted under the commission of his sovereign, the pirate under no one’s but his own.