Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/84

 Iceland, where they captured no less than 800 persons, a few of whom were ransomed several years afterwards by Christian IV., king of Denmark.

The existence of such an organized system of piracy may well excite our wonder at the present day; but the truth is, that since the time of the Vikings, to the latter part of the last century, the high seas were never clear of pirates belonging to one nation or another. Besides, the commercial jealousies and almost continual wars of the European nations, prevented them from uniting to crush the Barbary rovers. The English and Dutch maintained an extensive commerce with the Algerines, supplying them with gunpowder, arms, and naval stores; and found it more profitable to pay their customers a heavy tribute for a sort of half-peace, than to be at open war with them. De Witt, the famous Dutch admiral and statesman, in his Interest of Holland, thus views the question: "Although," he says, "our ships should be well guarded by convoys against the Barbary pirates, yet it would by no means be proper to free the seas from those freebooters — because we should thereby be put on the same footing as the French, Spanish, and Italians; wherefore it is best to leave that thorn in the sides of those nations." An English statesman, in an official paper written in 1671, amongst other objections to the surrender of Tangier, urges the advantage of making it an open port for the Barbary pirates to sell their prizes and refit at, in the same manner as they were permitted to do in the French ports. It is an actual fact that, in the seventeenth century, when England and France were at peace, Algerine cruisers frequently landed their English captives at Bordeaux, whence they were marched in handcuffs to Marseille, and there reshipped in other vessels, and taken to Algiers. This proceeding was to avoid the risk of recapture in the Straits of Gibraltar, and also to allow the pirates to remain out longer on their cruise, unencumbered with prisoners. Numerous instances of the complicity of European powers with this nefarious system might be adduced. Sir Cloudesley Shovel, in 1703, protected a Barbary pirate from receiving a well-merited chastisement from a Dutch squadron; but that need not surprise the reader, for at the same time the gallant admiral had power under the Great Seal to visit Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, make the usual presents, and 'if he could prevail with them to make war against France, and that some act of hostility was thereupon committed, he was to give such farther presents as he should think proper.'

The political system of the Algerines requires a few words. The authority of the Porte was soon shaken off, and then the janizaries, or soldiers, forming a kind of aristocratic democracy, chose a governor from their own number, under the familiar title of Dey (Uncle); and ruled the native Moors as an inferior and conquered race. Neither Moor nor Morisco was permitted to have any voice in the government, or to hold any office under it; the wealthiest native, if he met a janizary in the street, had to give way to let the proud soldier pass. The janizaries were all either Turks or renegades (slaves who had turned Mohammedans): so strictly was this rule earned out, that the son of a janizary by a Moorish woman was not allowed the privileges of his father, though