summate impudence, founded on pride and ignorance of the strength of
other powers, coupled with the peculiarity of its position and with the
fact that the great nations were too much engaged fighting with each
other to be at leisure to pay attention to it. Its rulers or Deys were
most of them ignorant men, who had risen, in many cases, from the ranks
of the janissaries or common Turkish soldiery, and its sole occupation
was piracy--piracy pure and simple.

It did not, like other powers, find a pretext for war in the righting of
a supposed or real wrong. The birds of the Pirates' Nest were much too
simple in their grandeur thus to beat about the bush. They went
straight to the point. Without any pretext at all they declared war
with a nation when they had a mind to plunder it, and straightway set
about making prizes of the merchantmen of that nation; at the same time
keeping carefully clear of its cruisers. If there had been a tangible
grievance, diplomacy might have set it right--but there never was any
grievance, either real or imaginary. If there had been a worthy fleet
that would come out and face a foe, courage and power might have settled
the question--but there was no such fleet. The nest possessed only a
few small frigates and a considerable number of boats, large and small,
which crept along the northern shores of Africa, and pounced upon unwary
traders, or made bold dashes at small villages on the southern shores of
Europe and in the isles of the Mediterranean. Trade was horribly
hampered by them, though they had no ostensible trade of their own;
their influence on southern Europe being comparable only to that of a
wasps' nest under one's window, with this difference, that even wasps,
as a rule, mind their own business, whereas the Algerine pirates minded
the business of everybody else, and called _that_ their own special
vocation!

Like other powers, they took prisoners, but instead of exchanging these
in times of war and freeing them on return of peace, they made
galley-slaves of them all, and held them to ransom. At all times there
were hundreds of Christian slaves held in bondage. Even in this present
century, so late as 1816, the Algerine Turks held in captivity thousands
of Christian slaves of all grades and classes, from all parts of Europe,
and these were in many cases treated with a degree of cruelty which is
perhaps equalled, but not surpassed, by the deeds recorded of negro
slavery; and so