The framers of that somewhat hastily conceived attempt to engraft a paper amendment upon the slowly matured product of oecumenical opinion, far from professing to make general law, expressly state that the Declaration "shall not be binding except upon those Powers who have acceded, or shall accede, to it." As regards Spain and the United States the Declaration is _res inter alios acta_.
It follows that, in recommending that any action taken by privateers against British vessels should be treated as an act of piracy, Sir George Baden-Powell is advocating an inadmissible atrocity, which derives no countenance from the view theoretically maintained by the United States, at the outset of the Civil War, of the illegality of commissions granted by the Southern Confederation.

His recommendation that our ports should be "closed" to privateers is not very intelligible.

Privateers would, of course, be placed under the restrictions which were imposed in 1870, in accordance with Lord Granville's instructions, even on the men-of-war of belligerents.

They would be forbidden to bring in prizes, to stay more than twenty-four hours, to leave within twenty-four hours of the start of a ship of the other belligerent, to take more coal than enough to carry them to the nearest home port, and to take any further supply of coal within three months.

We might, no doubt, carry discouragement of privateers by so much further as to make refusal of coal absolute in their case, but hardly so far as to deny entry to them under stress of weather.
The difficulties in the way of accepting Sir G.Baden-Powell's other suggestion are of a different order.