that not a few of the pirates and of those on shore who received their goods and otherwise aided them were Americans, that their activities had an important influence on the development of American commerce, and that documents relative to piracy make interesting reading. It is a matter for regret and on the editor's part for apology, that the book should have been so long in preparation. Work on it was begun prosperously before our country was engaged in war, but the "spare time" which the editor can command, always slight in amount, was much reduced during the period of warfare. Moreover, the Society, very properly, determined that, so long as war continued, the publication of their volumes and the expenditures now attendant upon printing ought to be postponed in favor of those patriotic undertakings, especially for the relief of suffering, which have made their name grateful to all lovers of the Navy and in all places where the _Comfort_ and the _Mercy_ have sailed. It may be objected against the plan of this book, that privateering and piracy should not be conjoined in one volume, with documents intermingled in one chronological order, lest the impression be created that piracy and privateering were much the same. It is true that, in theory and in legal definition, they are widely different things and stand on totally different bases. Legally, a privateer is an armed vessel (or its commander) which, in time of war, though owners and officers and crew are private persons, has a commission from a belligerent government to commit acts of warfare on vessels of its enemy. Legally, a pirate is one who commits robbery or other acts of violence on the sea (or on the land through descent from the sea) without having any authority from, and independently of, any organized government or political society. (Fighting and bloodshed and murder, it may be remarked by the way, though natural concomitants of the pirate's trade, are not, as is often supposed, essentials of the crime of piracy.) But wide as is the legal distinction between the authorized warfare of the privateer and the unauthorized violence of the pirate, in practice it was very difficult to keep the privateer and his crew, far from the eye of authority, within the bounds of legal conduct, or to prevent him from broadening out his operations into piracy, especially if a merely privateering cruise was proving unprofitable. Privateering was open to many abuses, and it was not without good reason that the leading powers of Europe, in 1856, by the Declaration of Paris, agreed to its abandonment.