MARITIME INTEENATIONAL LAW. 299 



Piracy committed depredations against the merchantmen of every 

 country, whether in a state of peace or war, and therefore it was 

 justly termed, " hostes humani generis^' whilst privateering and 

 filibustering, the modem name for piracy, commits depredations 

 during a state of belligerency ; yet in their operation and disastrous 

 results they are analogous, for both are committed in the solitude 

 of 'the seas, both are exercised, often, for the sake of plunder and 

 pillage, and seldom animated by love of country or freedom, 

 both execute destruction wide and wanton to the property of the 

 defenceless and unoffending non-combatants, and are, therefore, 

 alike hostile to the prosperity and civilisation of nations. 



The reply of a celebrated pirate, who was, when captured 

 "/« flagrante delicto" brought before the Emperor Alexander, 

 forcibly illustrates the distinction. " He was a pirate because he 

 had only one ship, if he had a fleet he would be a conqueror." 



The principle which has been laid down, and which we should 

 urge, is to secure a uniformity of the practice of maritime warfare 

 with the practice and laws of war on land,, or, in other words, the 

 waging of war, when nations are unhappily plunged therein, between 

 armed ships and armed men only, thus exempting from injury, 

 by the armed government ships, or privateers, the trade, the com- 

 merce, and the ports, and cities of the nations involved, from all the 

 evils incident to a state of war. 



THE "ALABAMA'S" DEPREDATIONS. 



In 1865, the question was brought into considerable prominence, 

 and rendered of great importance in consequence of the serious 

 complications which threatened to disturb the peaceful relations of 

 Great Britain and America, arising from the deplorable, not to 

 say culpable, escape from the shores of England of that famous 

 corsair, the " Alabama," and of th£ widespread depredations com- 

 mitted by her, upon the merchant marine of the Northern Federal 

 States, during the War of Secession. 



The dangers, which threatened at one time the maintenance of 

 peace between the two great Anglo-Saxon races, and the tre- 

 mendous disasters which would have resulted by the dire calamity of 

 war, arose mainly, if not entirely, from the escape of the 

 " Alabama," and, especially, her depredations were the direct result 



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