reeze can bear, the billows foam,
Survey our empire, and behold our home!
These are our realms, no limits to their sway,
Our flag the sceptre all who meet obey.
Ours the wild life in tumult still to range
From toil to rest, and joy in every change.

Piracy was the growth of maritime adventure, and developed with the
advancement of commerce. The Phoenicians and Greeks were especially apt
in the interstate wars which frequently degenerated into rapine and
plunder, and with them piracy became a recognized enterprise. In Homeric
times it was dignified with a respect worthy of a nobler cause--a
sentiment in which the freebooters of later centuries took arrogant
pride. The pirate--cruel, vicious, debased to the lowest degree of
turpitude--established a moral code governing his actions and
circumscribing his wanton license, and it was in the rigorous observance
of these "trade laws" and customs of their realm that this abortive
sense of honor manifested itself.

The successes of the Phoenicians and Greeks soon made the Mediterranean
the theatre of maritime robbery, in later years conducted under the
authority, sanction, and immunity of the Barbary powers. In fact, so
reckless had the enterprise become that the temerity of the free lances
knew no bounds, and headquarters, so to speak, were established, and for
a long time maintained, at Cilicia.

The vigorous campaign of Pompey in 67 B.C. against the pirates was but
the precursor of that systematic defence which the nations of the world
eventually adopted. The Hanseatic League of the cities of Northern
Germany and neighboring states, no doubt, had its origin in the
necessitous combination of merchants to resist the attacks of the
Norsemen. England sent out many expeditions to destroy the pestiferous
freebooters who swarmed from the African coast, and finally, in 1815,
the United States sent Decatur to Algiers to annihilate the nefarious
corsairs, who had thrived and become brazen in their recklessness during
the three centuries of their ascendant power. The incursions of the
Algerine pirates were made as far north as England, Ireland, and
Iceland, and through them an iniquitous slave trade was developed. The
law of nations did not place its ban upon this slave traffic until by
statute England and the United States attempted to obliterate this
ineradicable blot upon our civilization, and only a half century ago
Austria, Prussia, and Russia declared it to