4. Whilst such a treaty might be justly executed by such nations as Great Britain and the United States, would it be just, wise or humane to agree that their sailors who took service on board a privateer should be summarily tried and executed as pirates by several powers which could be named?
5. _Cui bono_ should Great Britain make such a treaty with France during the existing war. If no neutral power should enter into it with them, it could have no effect during its continuance.
6. The time may possibly come when Great Britain, in a war with the despotisms of Europe, might find it to be exceedingly to her interest to employ American sailors on board her privateers, and such a treaty would render this impossible. Why should she unnecessarily bind her hands?
7. The objections of the United States to enter into entangling alliances with European nations.
8. By the law of nations, as expounded both in British and American courts, a commission to a privateer, regularly issued by a belligerent nation, protects both the captain and the crew from punishment as pirates. Would the different commercial nations of the earth be willing to change this law as you propose, especially in regard to the crew? Would it be proper to do so in regard to the latter?
After I had stated these objections at some length on Friday, the 17th of March, Lord Clarendon observed that when some of them were stated the day before, they had struck him with so much force after reflection, that he had come to the office from the House of Lords at night and written them down and sent them to Sir James Graham. In his own opinion the treaty ought not to be concluded, and if the cabinet came to this conclusion the affair should drop, and I agreed I would not write to the Department on the subject. If otherwise, and the treaty should be presented to the Government of the United States, then I was to report our conversation.
In the conversation Lord Clarendon said they were more solicitous to be on good terms with the United States than any other nation, and that the project had not yet been communicated even to France.
(Vide 1 Kent’s Commentaries, 100. United States Statutes at large, 175, Act of March 3d, 1847, to provide for the punishment of piracy in certain cases. Mr. Polk’s message to Congress of December 8, 1846.)