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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. The object of the following collection of documents is not to give the whole history of any episode of piracy or of the career of any privateer, but rather, by appropriate selection, to illustrate, as well as is possible in one volume, all the different aspects of both employments, and to present specimens of all the different sorts of papers to which they gave rise. Nearly all the pieces are documents hitherto unprinted, but a few that have already been printed, mostly in books not easy of access, have been included in order to round out a story or a series. The collection ends with the termination of the last colonial war in 1763. Presented in chronological order, it may have a casual, as it certainly has a miscellaneous, appearance. But variety was intended, and on closer inspection and comparison the selection will be seen to have a more methodical character than at first appears, corresponding to the systematic procedure followed in privateering, in prize cases, and in trials for piracy. On the outbreak of war in which Great Britain was involved, it was customary for the King to issue a commission to the Lord High Admiral (or to the Lords of the Admiralty appointed to execute that office) authorizing him (or them) to empower proper officials, such as colonial governors, to grant letters of marque, or privateering commissions, to suitable persons under adequate safeguards.[1] The Lords of the Admiralty then issued warrants to the colonial governors (see doc. no. 127), authorizing them to issue such commissions or letters of marque. A specimen American privateering commission may be seen in doc. no. 144; a Portuguese letter of marque, and a paper by which its recipient purported to assign it to another, in docs. no. 14 and no. 15. Royal instructions were issued to al
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