We come, now, if the Court please, to a variety of considerations, many of them, I think, not at all pertinent to a judicial inquiry; many of them ethical; many of them political; many of them addressed to the consciences of men; and many of them addressed to the policy of Governments--and which, in the forum where they are debatable, and which for the most part is a forum which can never make a decision, may be useful and interesting. Some of them do approach, doubtless, the substance and shape of legal propositions; and I am sure I do no injustice either to the nature, or purpose, or character of these manifold views, when I say that they all centre on the proposition, that this transaction, which, in its own traits and features as a private act of these parties, is a crime of piracy, is transferred into the larger range of a conflict of force, authorized by the laws of war, and with no arbiter and no avenger, but in the conscience, and before the common Judge of all. Now, if the Court please, the legal notion to which we must bring this down, is this--that the acts here complained of are, within the law and jurisprudence which this Court administers, acts of privateering, not falling within the law of piracy. Now, what is privateering? My learned friends have spoken of privateering as if it were one of the recognized, regular, suitable public methods of carrying on hostilities between nations, and as if it fell within the general protection which makes combatants in the field, fighting as public enemies, and against public enemies, amenable only to the laws of war. And my learned friend, Mr. Lord, has read, with much satisfaction, the very pointed observations made by Mr. Marcy in his letter to the French Minister, which were very just and very appropriate as a home argument against France; that is, the encomiums of certain French commanders on the dignity and nobility of the conduct of privateers who rushed to the aid of their country when at war. Now, my view, and I believe the view of the law books and of the publicists of the present day, is this--that privateering is the last relic of the early and barbarous notions of war, that a trial of force between nations involved a rightful exercise of personal hostility by every individual of one nation against every individual of the other, and against every portion of the property of the other. That law of war which authorizes the attack on peaceful persons by armed bands on land, and the robbery, devastation, and destruction of private property wherever it may be found, has been long since displaced by those principles of humanity, of necessity, and of common sense, which make war an appeal, when there is no other arbiter, to the strength of the parties, to be determined with as little injury to property and life as possible. Now, privateers have never been looked upon as being themselves entitled to the least comparison with the regularly enrolled