Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/98

 say that "they come to much more a head than I expected; the reason is, there be many women and children, which cost £50 per head, first penny, and might sell for £100. Besides, there are divers which were masters of ships, calkers, carpenters, sailmakers, coopers, and surgeons, and others who are highly esteemed." The agent succeeded in redeeming 244 English, Scotch, and Irish captives at the average cost of £38 each. From the official record of their several names, places of birth, and prices, it appears that more was paid for the females than the males. The three highest sums on the list are £75, paid for Mary Bruster, of Youghal; £65, for Alice Hayes, of Edinburgh; and £50, for Elizabeth Mancor, of Dundee. The names of several natives of Baltimore — in all probability some of those carried off when that town was sacked fifteen years before — are in this list of redeemed. It will scarcely be believed, that strong opposition was made by the mercantile interest against k money being granted by parliament for the ransom of those poor captives — on the ground, as the opposers' petition expresses: "That if the slaves be redeemed upon a public score, then seamen will render themselves to the mercy of the Algerines, and not fight in defense of the goods and ships of the merchants." A more curious instance of wisdom in relation to this subject, occurred during the profligate reign of the second Charles. A large sum of money appropriated for the redemption of captives having been lost, somehow, between the Navy Board and the Commissioners of Excise, it was gravely proposed: "That whatever loss or damage the English shall sustain from Algerines, shall be required and made good to the losers out of the estates of the Jews here in England. Because such a law may save a great expense of Christian treasure and blood!"

The first attempt to release English captives by force from Algiers was made in 1621, after the project had been debated in the privy council for nearly four years. With the exception of rescuing about thirty slaves of various nations, who swam off to the English ships, this expedition turned out a perfect failure. In 1662, another fleet was sent, a treaty was made with the dey, and 150 captives ransomed with money raised by the English clergy in their several parishes. In 1664, 1672, 1682, and 1686, other treaties were made with the Algerines: the frequent recurrence of those treaties shows the little attention paid to them by the pirates.

In 1682, Louis XIV. determined to stop the Algerine aggressions on France; and at the same time to try a new and terrible invention in the art of war. Renau d'Elicagarry had just laid before the French government a plan for building ships of sufficient strength to bear the recoil caused by firing bombs from mortars. Louis, accordingly, sent Admiral Duquesne with a fleet and some of the new bomb-vessels to destroy Algiers. The expedition was unsuccessful, the bombs proving nearly as destructive to the French as to their enemies. The next year, Duquesne returned, and, taught by experience, succeeded in firing all his bombs into the pirate city. The terrified dey capitulated, and surrendered 600 slaves to the fleet; but sixty-four of those unfortunate captives being discovered by the French officers to be Englishmen, were sent