greed of gain than an ardent love of country. Shares in lucky
ships were bought and sold in the gambling spirit of a stock
exchange. Fortunes were won and lost regardless of the public
service. It became almost impossible to recruit men for the navy
because they preferred the chance of booty in a privateer. For
instance, the State of Massachusetts bought a twenty-gun ship,
the Protector, as a contribution to the naval strength, and one
of her crew, Ebenezer Fox, wrote of the effort to enlist
sufficient men: "The recruiting business went on slowly, however,
but at length upwards of three hundred men were carried, dragged,
and driven abroad; of all ages, kinds, and descriptions; in all
the various stages of intoxication from that of sober tipsiness
to beastly drunkenness; with the uproar and clamor that may be
more easily imagined than described. Such a motley group has
never been seen since Falstaff's ragged regiment paraded the
streets of Coventry."

There was nothing of glory to boast of in fetching into port some
little Nova Scotia coasting schooner with a cargo of deals and
potatoes, whose master was also the owner and who lost the
savings of a lifetime because he lacked the men and guns to
defend his property against spoliation. The war was no concern of
his, and he was the victim of a system now obsolete among
civilized nations, a relic of a barbarous and piratical age whose
spirit has been revived and gloried in recently only by the
Government of the German Empire. The chief fault of the
privateersman was that he sailed and fought for his own gain, but
he was never guilty of sinking ships with passengers and crew
aboard, and very often he played the gentleman in gallant style.
Nothing could have seemed to him more abhorrent and incredible