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TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 883 
were the general enemies of the Adriatic; Africa under the Vandal reign was a 
nest of the fiercest pirates; the Venetian chronicles are full of complaints of the 
ravages of the Corsairs of Ancona, and there is no other name but piracy for such 
acts of the Genoese as the unprovoked pillage of Tripoli by Andrea Doria in 1535, 
To form a just idea of the Corsairs of the past it is well to remember that com- 
merce and piracy were often synonymous terms, even among the English. up to the 
reion of Elizabeth. Listen to the description given by the pious Cavendish of his 
commercial circumnavigation of the globe: ‘It hath pleased Almighty God to 
suffer me to circumpass the whole globe of the world... . I navigated along the 
coast of Chili, Peru, and New Spain, where I made great spoils. All the villages 
and towns that ever I landed at I burned and spoiled, and had I not been discovered 
upon the coast I had taken a great quantity of treasure ;’ and so he concludes, ‘ The 
Lord be praised for all his mercies! ’ 
Sir William Monson, when called upon by James I. to propose a scheme for an 
attack on Algiers, recommended that all the maritime powers of Europe should 
contribute towards the expense, and participate in the gains by the sale of Moors 
and Turks as slaves. 
After the discovery of America and the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, 
piracy developed to an extraordinary extent. The audacity of the Barbary corsairs 
seems incredible at the present day; they landed on the shores and islands of the 
Mediterranean, and even extended their rayages to Great Britain, carrying off all 
the inhabitants whom they could seize into the most wretched slavery. ‘The most 
formidable of these piratical states was Algiers, a military oligarchy, consisting of 
a body of janissaries, recruited by adventurers from the Levant, the outcasts of the 
Mohammedan world, criminals and renegades from every nation in Europe. They 
elected their own ruler or Dey, who exercised despotic sway, tempered by frequent 
assassination ;.they oppressed without mercy the natives of the country, accumu- 
lated vast riches, had immense numbers of Christian slaves, and kept all Europe in 
a state bordering on subjection by the terror which they inspired. Nothing is 
sadder or more inexplicable than the shameful manner in which this state of things 
was accepted by civilised nations. Many futile attempts were made during succes- 
sive centuries to humble their arrogance, but it only increased by every manifesta- 
tion of the powerlessness of Europe to restrain it. It was reserved for our own 
countryman, Lord Exmouth, by his brilliant victory in 1816, for ever to put an 
end to pira¢y and Christian slavery in the Mediterranean. His work, however, was 
left incomplete, for though he destroyed the navy of the Algerines, and so rendered 
them powerless for evil on the seas, they were far from being humbled; they 
continued to slight their treaties and to subject even the agents of powerful nations 
to contumely and injustice. The French took the only means possible to destroy 
this nest of ruffians, by the almost unresisted occupation of Algiers and the depor- 
tation of its Turkish aristocracy. 
They found the whole country in the possession of a hostile people, some of 
whom had never been subdued since the fall of the Roman empire, and the 
world owes France no small debt of gratitude for having transformed what was a 
savage and almost uncultivated country into one of the richest as well as the most 
beautiful in the basin of the Mediterranean. 
What has been accomplished in Algeria is being effected in Tunisia. The 
treaty of the Kasr-es-Saeed, which established a French Protectorate there, and 
the military occupation of the Regency, were about as high-handed and unjustifi- 
able acts as are recorded in history ; but there can be no possible doubt regarding 
the important work of civilisation and improvement that has resulted from them. 
European courts of justice have been established all over the country ; the exports 
and imports have increased from 23 to 51 millions of francs, the revenue from 6 to 
19 millions, without the imposition of a single new tax, and nearly half a million 
per annum is being spent on education. 
Sooner or later the same thing must happen in the rest of North Africa, though 
at present international jealousies retard this desirable consummation. It seems 
hard to condemn such fair countries to continued barbarism, in the interest 
of tyrants who misgovern and oppress their people. The day cannot be far off — 
