6988. PRIVATEERING, Abolition of.—[continued].
I am to acknowledge
the receipt of your letter, proposing a stipulation
for the abolition of the practice of privateering
in times of war. The benevolence of
this proposition is worthy of the nation
[France] from which it comes, and our sentiments
on it have been declared in the treaty
to which you are pleased to refer, as well as in
some others which have been proposed. There
are in those treaties some other principles
which would probably meet the approbation of
your government, as flowing from the same
desire to lessen the occasions and the calamities
of war. On all these * * * we are ready to
enter into negotiation with you, only proposing
to take the whole into consideration at once.—
To Jean Baptiste Ternant. Washington ed. iii, 477.
Ford ed., vi, 122.
(Pa.,
1792)
