Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall v3p2.djvu/261

 great object its writer had in view.” On the 2d Jan. 1816, but not until then, he acquainted Captain Croker, that it had been received by Government, and that he had “every reason to believe that it was favorably considered.”

Chagrined at the delay which had already taken place, and fearing that his representations were not likely to be attended to by those in power, Captain Croker now determined to publish his memoir of Algiers, which Was no sooner done than the present Lord High Chancellor made use of it in the House of Commons, declared it to be “a clear, substantial, and authentic document;” and succeeded in eliciting from Viscount Castlereagh an assurance that the case of the Christian slaves was actually under consideration. On the 21st March, 1816, Lord Exmouth, then off Port Mahon, informed the fleet under his command, that he had “been instructed and directed by H.R.H. the Prince Regent to proceed to Algiers, and there make certain arrangements for diminishing at least the piratical excursions of the Barbary States, by which thousands of our fellow creatures, innocently following their commercial pursuits, have been dragged into the most wretched and revolting state of slavery.”

After considerable hesitation on the part of the Dey, who boasted much of the strength of his “warlike city,” a treaty was at length concluded, but which failed of giving general satisfaction. Even the philanthropic Mr. Wilberforce, in a letter to Captain Croker, expressed his decided opinion, that the liberation of the Christians then in slavery should have been effected rather by “cannon balls” than by the “payment of a single piastre” as ransom. This gentleman was one of the first to whom a copy of Captain Croker’s pamphlet had been sent; and after perusing it, he declared that the author “had kindled, even in the mind of such an old stager as himself in politics, a flame, which, he trusted, would never be extinguished, till the evils which, to the disgrace of the great European powers, and more especially of Great Britain, had been so long tolerated, were at an end.” The glorious results of Lord Exmouth’s second visit to Algiers is well known, and we have only to deplore the policy which