With the single exception of the admission of the right of blockade, the Royal Proclamation is unfriendly to the United States. It admits the right of the Confederacy's Government to issue letters of marque, from which it follows that American ships captured by cruisers of the rebels could be taken into English ports, and there sold, after having been condemned by prize courts sitting at any one of the places belonging to the Confederacy. This is no light aid to the pirates; for there are English ports on every sea, and on almost every one of the ocean's tributaries. Vessels belonging to America, and captured by the Confederacy's privateers in the Mediterranean, could be taken into Gibraltar, into Valetta, and into Corfu, all of which are English ports. Those captured in the Mexican Gulf and the Caribbean could be sent into any one of the many ports that belong to England in the West Indies. If captured in the North Atlantic, or the Baltic, or any other of the waters of Northern Europe, they could be sent into the ports of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. In the South Atlantic are St. Helena and Cape Town, which would afford shelter to Mr. Davis's privateers and their prizes. In the East Indies British ports are numerous, from Aden to the last places wrested from the Chinese, and they would be all open to the enterprise of the Confederacy's cruisers. In the Pacific are the English harbors on the Northwest Coast; and in Australia there are British ports that ought, considering their origin, to be particularly friendly to men who should enter the navy of the Secessionists. England has in advance provided places for the transaction of all the business that shall be necessary to render privateering profitable to the "lawless brood" of the whole world. Into all of her thousand seaports could the lucky Confederates go, and dispose of their captures, just as the old Buccaneers used to sell their prizes in the ports of the English colonies. Nor could all the efforts of all the navies of the world prevent privateers from preying upon our commerce, as they are to be commissioned in foreign countries, and will sail from the ports of those countries. The East Indian seas, the Levant, and the Caribbean are the old homes and haunts of pirates; and under the encouragement which England is disposed to afford to piracy, for the especial benefit of Slavery, the buccaneering business could not fail to flourish exceedingly. True, our Government would not allow privateers to be fitted out in our ports, during the Russian War, to prey upon the commerce of France and England; but what of that? One good turn does _not_ deserve another, according to the public morality of nations so orderly and pious as are England and France.