The "good old days!" Those who sing too emphatically the glories of the "good old days" must either be influenced by the enchantment distance lends to the view, or guided by the wholesome proverb, "Let nothing, except that which is good, be spoken of the dead." Human nature seems an inheritance unchanging in its properties, and it was in the old time much as it is now, capable of bringing forth fruit good or bad, in accordance with the training it received, or the associations by which it was surrounded. The old days were very far from being either very golden or very good, the strong arm was too often the strong law, and selfishness was far more likely to make the weak ones a prey for plunder, than was compassion to make them objects for assistance. There was a good deal of the Ishmael curse about the old feudal days; the Baron's hand was too ready to be against every man's, and every man's against his; to plunder and to pillage at all convenient opportunities, as well by sea as by land, seemed very much a leading institution. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Piracy was almost openly recognized; a foreign ship with a rich cargo was too great a temptation for the free sailors of those rough-and-ready days, and there was in reality as much of the spirit of piracy in the rugged justice by which it was endeavoured to suppress the crimes, as in the crimes themselves. Supposing an act of piracy to have been committed, restitution was first demanded from the nation, or maritime town, to which the pirate belonged; and if satisfaction was not obtained, then the aggrieved party was allowed to take out "Letters of Marque," and might sally forth to all intents a pirate, to plunder any ship sailing from the place to which the vessel which had first robbed him belonged. This system was acknowledged under the name of the "Right of Private Reprisal;" and so, what with pirates licensed and unlicensed, ships seeking plunder without any discrimination, and ships seeking revenge without much, Hallam might well write: "In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a rich vessel was never secure from attack, and neither restitution nor punishment of the criminals was to be obtained from Governments, who sometimes feared the plunderer, and sometimes connived at the offence." To piracy was added the constant petty warfare and feuds that were carried on between maritime nations, and even between towns of the same nation. Hallam quotes, "The Cinque Ports, and other trading towns of England, were in a constant state of hostility with their opposite neighbours during the reigns of Edward I. and II.; half the instruments of Rymer might be quoted in proof of these conflicts, and of those with the mariners of Norway and Denmark." Sometimes mutual envy produced frays between different English towns; thus in the year 1254 the Winchilsea mariners attacked a Yarmouth galley, and killed some of her men.