own province. He was accountable only to
the king and his government, and England was so distant that he was
really responsible almost to nobody but himself.

The governors were naturally just as desirous to get rich quickly,
just as desirous of getting all that they could for themselves, as was
anybody else--only they had been taught and had been able to learn
that it was not right to be an actual pirate or robber. They wanted to
be rich easily and quickly, but the desire was not strong enough to
lead them to dishonor themselves in their own opinion and in the
opinion of others by gratifying their selfishness. They would even
have stopped the pirates from doing what they did if they could, but
their provincial governments were too weak to prevent the freebooters
from robbing merchant vessels, or to punish them when they came
ashore. The provinces had no navies, and they really had no armies;
neither were there enough people living within the community to
enforce the laws against those stronger and fiercer men who were not
honest.

After the things the pirates seized from merchant vessels were once
stolen they were altogether lost. Almost never did any owner apply for
them, for it would be useless to do so. The stolen goods and
merchandise lay in the storehouses of the pirates, seemingly without
any owner excepting the pirates themselves.

The governors and the secretaries of the colonies would not dishonor
themselves by pirating upon merchant vessels, but it did not seem so
wicked after the goods were stolen--and so altogether lost--to take a
part of that which seemed to have no owner.

A child is taught that it is a very wicked thing to take, for
instance, by force, a lump of sugar from another child; but when a
wicked child has seized the sugar from another and taken it around the
corner, and that other child from whom he has seized it has gone home
crying, it does not seem so wicked for the third child to take a bite
of the sugar when it is offered to him, even if he thinks it has been
taken from some one else.

It was just so, no doubt, that it did not seem so wicked to Governor
Eden and Secretary Knight of North Carolina, or to Governor Fletcher
of New York, or to other colonial governors, to take a part of the
booty that the pirates, such as Blackbeard, had stolen. It did not
even seem very wicked to compel such pirates to give up a part of what
was not theirs, and which seemed to have no owner.

In Gover