letters of marque

(noun)

A government license authorizing a person (known as a privateer) to attack and capture enemy vessels and bring them before admiralty courts for condemnation and sale.

Related Terms

Examples of letters of marque in the following topics:

  • Delegated Powers

    • The delegated powers are a list of items found in the U.S.
    • The delegated powers, also called enumerated powers, are a list of items found in Article I, Section 8 of the U.S.
    • The list of enumerated powers includes the following: "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;" "To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;" "to declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;" and "to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."
    • Interpretation of the Necessary and Proper Clause has been controversial, especially during the early years of the republic.
    • Compare and contrast the "strict constructionists" and "loose constructionists" schools of thought of the Constitution

  • The Peace of Westphalia

    • The end of the war was not brought about by one treaty, but instead by a group of treaties, collectively named the Peace of Westphalia.
    • General recognition of the exclusive sovereignty of each party over its lands, people, and agents abroad, and responsibility for the warlike acts of any of its citizens or agents.
    • Issuance of unrestricted letters of marque and reprisal to privateers was forbidden.
    • France retained the control of the Bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun near Lorraine, received the cities of the Décapole in Alsace and the city of Pignerol near the Spanish Duchy of Milan.
    • the Treaty of Münster between the Holy Roman Emperor and France was one of three treaties that made up the Peace of Westphalia

  • Article I

    • Article One of the United States Constitution describes the powers of Congress, the legislative branch of the federal government.
    • The section provides that the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended "except when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it"; prohibits bills of attainder or ex post facto laws; bars the imposition of taxes or duties on articles exported from any state or the granting of preference to ports of one state over another; and prohibits civil officers from accepting titles of nobility without the consent of Congress.
    • The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several states, and the electors in each state shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the state legislature.
    • To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;
    • No state shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility.

  • Observation Survey

    • Letter identification: This task requires a child to identify 54 letters – 26 uppercase letters, 26 lower case letters, and a printer's "a" and "g" letters.
    • The child receives a correct score if he or she can identify a letter by either letter name, the sound the letter makes, or by a word that starts with that letter.
    • On other words, he wrote letters out of sequence.
    • During writing, she observed that the majority of the time he used upper case letters.
    • She has a strong sense of his confusions at the letter, word, and text levels.

  • The Five Declensions

    • There are five Declensions in Latin, distinguished from each other by the final letter of the Stem, and also by the Termination of the Genitive Singular, as follows:—
    • FINAL LETTER OF STEM.
    • The Vocative is regularly like the Nominative, except in the singular of nouns in -us of the Second Declension.

  • Common Spelling Errors

    • Phonetics is a field that studies the sounds of a language.
    • A word has silent letters that the writer may forget to include.
    • A word has double letters that the writer may forget to include.
    • The writer may use double letters when they are not needed.
    • Omitting letters from a word (typing "brthday" instead of "birthday," for example)

  • Economic Retaliation and Reaction to the Townshend Acts

    • Dickinson's Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania
    • The most influential colonial response to the Townshend Acts was a series of twelve essays by John Dickinson entitled "Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania," which began appearing in December 1767.
    • Dickinson sent a copy of his "Letters" to James Otis of Massachusetts, informing Otis that "whenever the Cause of American Freedom is to be vindicated, I look towards the Province of Massachusetts Bay."
    • Upon receipt of the Massachusetts Circular Letter, other colonies followed suit and sent their own petitions to the king.
    • He also sent a letter to Massachusetts Governor Francis Bernard, instructing him to have the Massachusetts House rescind the Circular Letter.

  • Capital Letters

    • Capital letters identify proper names, people and their languages, geographical names, and certain government agencies.
    • Always capitalize the very first word of a sentence, no matter what it is.
    • Days of the week, months, and holidays are always capitalized.
    • In titled works (such as books, articles, or artwork) the majority of the words are capitalized.
    • These words are only capitalized if they come at the beginning of the title.

  • Permutations of Nondistinguishable Objects

    • Example: Consider how many distinct ways you can order the letters of the word "waterfall."
    • The word waterfall consists of $9$ letters in total, so $n=9$.
    • The letter "a" appears twice, giving a value of $2$ for $n_{1}$.
    • Similarly, the letter "l" appears twice, yielding $n_{2} = 2$.
    • Thus, the number of distinct permutations for the letters in "waterfall" can be calculated as:

  • Melodic Keyboard-Style Voice-Leading

    • Trinkets offer a limited set of musical features, in order to keep things simple.
    • Most of these features are included in the example trinket at the bottom of this page.
    • Pitch classes are designated by their letter names followed by - for flat, # for sharp, or "n" for natural.
    • So ISO Octave 4 (middle C up to the B above it) uses lower case letters:
    • Here is an example that uses many of the features listed above.