CHAP. VI.]

In 1814, when the long revolutionary war appeared to be ended, and men's minds were in a fever of joy at the extraordinary triumphs that conducted the allied armies to Paris, the corporation of London went up with an address of congratulation to the prince-regent, in which they say: 'We cannot but look back with the highest admiration at the firmness, the wisdom, and the energy which have been exercised by our beloved country during this long and arduous struggle.' In 1816, the same corporation, in the address of complaint to the throne, says: Our grievances are the natural effect of rash and ruinous wars, unjustly commenced and pertinaciously persisted in.' The inconsistencies of a large popular body are not to be examined too severely; the change of tone ought to have shewn the government that it had its origin in some deep-rooted evil. The truth was, that the people-using the term in its largest sense-had ceased to sympathise with the government. In 1814, and indeed during the fiercest years of the contest with Napoleon, the people were borne along with the government by the irrepressible energy of our national character. The peace came, and the government, instead of marching at the head of the people from victory to victory, was engaged in a struggle with the people for the maintenance of the war-system of taxation and lavish expenditure, when the war-excitement was passed away. Corn-laws carried amidst riots-property-tax maintained for a season, and then wrested out of their hands-large military establishments continued -sinecures upheld and defended-reckless extravagance in the highest places-these were the things that the most sober and reasonable of the middle classes felt to constitute a cruel injustice--which those below them confounded with the sanative course of legislative and executive authority. The nation was defrauded of its reasonable expectations. The real danger, therefore, was not so much that the people should be irritated and misled by mobleaders and unscrupulous writers, as that a general feeling should grow up in the nation, that government was a power antagonistic to the people-a power to be striven against as against a natural enemy-an oppressive and not a protective power-a power of separate and exclusive interests from the people-a power never to be trusted. We speak advisedly, and from experience, when we say that this was the general feeling of the great bulk of the industrious classes, long after the first sufferings that attended the transition state of peace had passed away. This was the feeling that was far more dangerous to the national interests than any insurrectionary outbreak of the masses of the working population. Deluded these masses unquestionably were-acted upon by demagogues. On the other hand, many amongst the upper and middle classes were alarmed into a prostrate adhesion to the menacing policy of the government, and were ready with lives and fortunes' to put down the revolutionary spirit which they were assured was working under the guise of parliamentary reform. But, during all this unhappy time, the government had no love from any class-very little respect; intense hate from many-slavish fear from more. The government was denationalising the

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people. There was no confidence on either side. The wounds of the state during the last years of the regency were more severe than the wounds of war, and left deeper scars. The foundations of the state were loosened; there was no cohesion in the materials out of which the state was built up. The government took the fearful course of sowing distrust of the poor amongst the rich. The demagogues did their own counter-work of exciting hatred of the rich amongst the poor. It was a season of reciprocal distrust. Divide and govern' may be a safe maxim for subduing a faction; it is the most perilous principle for ruling a nation.

CHAPTER VI

HE attack upon Algiers forms an episode in the history of the peace. This terrific assertion of the rights of civilised states, as opposed to barbarian violence and aggression, was, indeed, a consequence of the peace. The pirates of the Mediterranean were nourished in their lawless power by the jealousies of the maritime states of Europe: and England is perhaps not entirely free from the reproach which was raised against her, of having truckled to the insolent domination of Algiers and Tunis, that she might hold them, like ferocious beasts in her leash, ready to let slip upon her maritime enemies. War calls forth as many of the selfish as of the heroic passions. At any rate, the attitude which England assumed towards the Barbary states, at the termination of the war, was wholly different from that which she had maintained during many years, and under many governments, whether in war or in peace. Our treaties with these states had been of longer standing than those with any other European power. The treaties with Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, date as far back as 1662. With the exception of one vigorous reprisal for an outrage upon the English flag in 1695, the greatest maritime country in the world had, for a century and a half, exchanged courtesies with the corsairs, who not only robbed upon the seas, but carried off the defenceless inhabitants of the Italian shores to the most fearful and hopeless slavery. With the full knowledge of the extent of these atrocities, we continued, up to the very end of the war, to treat these piratical governments with the respect due only to those states which submit to the law of nations. Lord Cochrane stated in parliament in 1816, that, three or four years before, the humiliating duty had been imposed upon him of carrying rich presents from our government to the Dey of Algiers; and it was even asserted, without contradiction, that a letter had been addressed to that chief pirate by the highest authority in our country. All this took place with the fullest conviction that the habits of the barbarian governments were wholly unchanged; that they were the same in the latter days of George III. as they were

in the days of Charles II. 'Algiers,' says a writer of 1680, 'is a den of sturdy thieves formed into a body, by which, after a tumultuary sort, they govern, having the grand signior for their protector, who supplies them with native Turks for their soldiery, which is the greatest part of their militia; and they, in acknowledgment, lend him their ships when his affairs require it. They are grown a rich and powerful people, and, by a long practice of piracy, become good seamen; and, when pressed by our men of war, as of late we have experimented, they fight and defend themselves like brave men, inferior, I am persuaded, to no people whatever. They have no commerce, and so are without any taste of the benefits of peace; whence their life becomes a continual practice of robbery, and, like beasts of the desert, they only forbear to wrong where by fear, not honesty, they are deterred.'

And yet, however mean we may justly consider this long course of our national policy towards the Barbary states, the annihilation of their predatory governments was not an easy task to be accomplished, nor a safe object to be pursued, even if it were for a time successful. These pirates of Africa started up three hundred years ago, under the sway of the Barbarossas, and presented at once to the governments of Europe the daring, revengeful, and cruel race that they so long remained-opposed to every people-often chastised and menaced with destruction, but rising unsubdued from the passing blow, ready for new deeds of outrage and desperation. A long experience had shewn that although pledges of peace-the release of Christian slaves, and the renunciation of the future power of making slaves-might be extorted from these states by the burning of their ships and the destruction of their fortifications, they would not continue the less a government of robbers, returning to their old trade in utter want of all other means of existence, all other sources of importance, all other relations of confidence between the rulers and the people. It was clear that Algiers, especially, would not come within the pale of civilisation until it was revolutionised. England, which had just concluded a war against the aggrandisement of France, could not, with any consistency, have attempted to plant her laws and her language on the African shores of the Mediterranean; nor would she, with her experience of the difficulties of colonisation under the most favourable circumstances, have endeavoured, amidst the jealousies and possible hostilities of Europe, to amalgamate her own people with the barbarians of Northern Africa, and thus to found an orderly, a civilised, and a powerful nation. It would have been no common task there to change the habits of centuries; to plant useful industry in the soil where only destructive rapine had flourished; to connect the people with their rulers by salutary laws; and, hardest of all, to defer something to national habits and prejudices, whether in religion or in morals. The task has since been attempted by another great nation, not in the spirit of colonisation, but of conquest. It was our task, in 1816, to take neither course-content to succour the oppressed, and to humiliate the oppressor.

At the Congress of Vienna the aggressions of the Barbary states formed a natural subject of deliberation. An attempt was made by some enthusiasts to get up a European crusade against the infidel corsairs. It was perhaps fortunate that the congress had more pressing interests forced upon its attention. We were spared the fearful spectacle of Christianity girding on the sword of vengeance, to trample on the bleeding corse of an adverse faith. Civilisation was content to assert her rights without the dangerous admixture of religious zeal. In 1815 the government of the United States, whose ships had been plundered by the Algerines, captured a frigate and a brig belonging to the Dey, and obtained a compensation of sixty thousand dollars. It has been stated that this treaty saved the fleet of the Dey from attack in the harbour of Algiers--an enterprise which had been resolved upon by the government of the United States before the expedition of Lord Exmouth. In the spring of 1816, Lord Exmouth, with a squadron under his command, proceeded to Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, where he effected the release of seventeen hundred and ninety-two Christian slaves, and negotiated treaties of peace and amity on behalf of the minor powers in the Mediterranean. From Tunis and Tripoli a declaration was obtained that no Christian slaves should in future be made by either of these powers. The Dey of Algiers, however, refused to agree to the abolition of slavery without permission from the sultan. Lord Exmouth acceded to a suspension for three months of the Dey's decision; and returned to England with his fleet. One condition of the treaty with Algiers, then concluded by Lord Exmouth, was, that the governments of Sicily and Sardinia should pay ransom for the release of their subjects; and, in point of fact, they did so pay, to the extent of nearly four hundred thousand dollars. This clause of the treaty was justly denounced in the British parliament, as an acknowledgment of the right of depredation exercised by the barbarians. In the debate on this occasion, Lord Cochrane maintained 'that two sail of the line would have been sufficient to compel the Dey of Algiers to accede to any terms. The city of Algiers was on the sea-shore, the water was deep enough for first-rates to come up to the very walls, and those were mounted only with a few pieces of cannon, with the use of which the barbarians were scarcely acquainted.' Lord Cochrane qualified this opinion in the subsequent session. It was fortunate that such an assertion was not the cause of an inadequate preparation and a fatal repulse. Lord Exmouth had his own observation for his guide. The event proved that the place, as well as the people, had remained unchanged during a long course of years. The city still preserved its

CHAP. VI.]

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Lord Exmouth returned home from the Mediterranean in June 1816. It would appear that the great possibility of the refusal of the Dey of Algiers, altogether to renounce the practice of making slaves, was not contemplated as a reason for hostile preparations. The fleet of Lord Exmouth was dismantled; the crews were paid off and disbanded. A sudden outrage, which occurred even before Lord Exmouth quitted the Mediterranean, but which did not then come to his knowledge, was the obvious cause of the change in the determination of our government. In 1806 we contracted with the Dey for the occupation of Bona, a town, with a capacious harbour, in the regency of Algiers, for the purpose of the coral-fishery being carried on under the protection of our flag. Here, on the 23d of May, it being the season of the fishery, were assembled a great number of boats from the Italian shores, and as that day was the festival of the Ascension, the peaceful crews were preparing to hear mass suddenly a gun was fired from the Algerine castle, and a large body of infantry and cavalry rushed upon the unfortunate fishers who had landed, and fired upon those who remained within the harbour in their boats; the guns from the forts also joined in this fearful massacre. The British flag was torn down and trampled under foot, and the house of our vice-consul was pillaged. It would appear that this was no concerted act of the Algerine government, but a sudden movement of fanaticism on the part of the licentious soldiery. Be this as it may, an expedition against Algiers was instantly determined upon by the British cabinet. A formidable fleet was equipped, with the least possible delay, at Portsmouth, and crews were collected from the different guard-ships, and volunteers invited to serve upon this particular enterprise. For once, a British fleet went to sea without recourse to the disgraceful practice of impressment. render crews efficient, who were so hastily collected, and so unused to mutual operations, was a labour that required no common share of energy and prudence in the commander. With a part of his squadron, Lord Exmouth sailed to Plymouth, and finally left that port on the 28th of July, with a fleet consisting of twenty-five sail of large and small ships. At Gibraltar, the British admiral was joined by the Dutch admiral, Van Cappellan, with five frigates and a sloop, and having also received a reinforcement of gun-boats, he finally set sail for Algiers on the 14th. The winds being adverse, the fleet did not arrive in sight of Algiers till the 27th of August. During his course, Lord Exmouth spoke the British sloop Prometheus, which had been sent forward to bring off the British consul from Algiers: the family of our public officer had been rescued, but the consul himself had been put in chains. Here was a new insult to be avenged.

Το

A most interesting and graphic narrative of the expedition to Algiers was published by Mr Abraham Salamé, a native of Alexandria, who was taken out by Lord Exmouth to act as his interpreter. The description of a sea-fight, like the description of a

unless we associate our interest with the fate of some one individual. Mr Salamé was, at one and the same time, an actor and a spectator in this remarkable contest. At five o'clock on the morning of the 27th, as the fleet was nearing Algiers, Salamé put on an English dress by the advice of Lord Exmouth, and was furnished with two letters, one for the Dey, the other for the British consul. The letter to the Dey demanded the entire abolition of Christian slavery; the delivery of all Christian slaves in the kingdom of Algiers; the restoration of all the money that had been paid for the redemption of slaves by the King of the Two Sicilies and the King of Sardinia; peace between Algiers and the Netherlands; and the immediate liberation of the British consul, and two boats' crews who had been detained with him. The commander's letter to the consul of course contained an assurance that every effort should be made for his safety; but who, under such circumstances, could forget that when the French Admiral Duquesne, in 1682, bombarded Algiers, the Dey fastened the unhappy French consul to the mouth of a cannon, and blew him to atoms, in savage defiance of the hostile armament? At eleven o'clock the interpreter reached the mole, in a boat bearing a flag of truce, and delivering his letters to the captain of the port, demanded an answer to the letter addressed to the Dey in one hour. The Algerine engaged that an answer, if answer were returned at all, should be given in two hours; and in the meantime the interpreter remained in a sufficiently uncomfortable situation, within pistol-shot of thousands of the people who were on the walls and batteries. He employed himself in observing the situation of the city, and the strength of the fortifications. His description of the place differs very little from that given by Joseph Pitts more than a century before. 'The houses,' says Pitts, are all over white, being flat, and covered with lime and sand as floors. The upper part of the town is not so broad as the lower part, and therefore at sea it looks just like the top-sail of a ship. It is a very strong place, and well fortified with castles and guns. There are seven castles without the walls, and two tiers of guns in most of them; but in the greatest castle, which is on the mole without the gate, there are three tiers of guns, many of them of an extraordinary length, carrying fifty, sixty-yea, eighty-pound shot. Besides all these castles, there is at the higher end of the town, within the walls, another castle with many guns. And, moreover, on many places towards the sea are great guns planted. Algiers is well walled, and surrounded with a great trench. It hath five gates, and some of these have two, some three other gates within them; and some of them plated all over with thick iron. So that it is made strong and convenient for being what it iss-a nest of pirates. The following wood-cut will give some idea of the strength of this place on the sea-side, at the period of Lord Exmouth's attack.

The interpreter with his flag of truce waited for his answer from eleven o'clock till half-past two, but no answer came. During this time a breeze

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sprung up, the fleet advanced into the bay, and layto within half a mile of Algiers. The interpreter then hoisted the signal that no answer had been given, and the fleet immediately began to bear up, and every ship to take her position. Salamé reached the Queen Charlotte, Lord Exmouth's ship, in safety; but he candidly acknowledges, almost more dead than alive. Then he saw the change which comes over a brave and decided man at the moment when resolve passes into action. 'I was quite surprised

fired at Algiers. The Queen Charlotte passed through all the batteries without firing a gun, and took up a position within a hundred yards of the mole-head batteries. At the first shot, which was fired by the Algerines at the Impregnable, Lord Exmouth cried out: That will do; fire, my fine fellows!' The miserable Algerines who were looking on, as at a show, with apparent indifference to the consequences, were swept away by hundreds by this first fire from the Queen Charlotte. There was a great crowd of people in every part, many of whom, after the first discharge, I saw running away under the walls like dogs, walking upon their feet and hands.'

From a quarter before three o'clock till nine, the most tremendous firing on both sides continued without intermission, and the firing did not cease altogether until half-past eleven. During this engagement of nine hours, the allied fleet fired a hundred

and eighteen tons of gunpowder, and five hundred tons of shot and shells. The Algerines exclaimed that hell had opened its mouth upon them through the English ships. That the Algerines had plied their instruments of destruction with no common alacrity is sufficiently shewn by the fact, that eight hundred and fifty-two officers and men were killed in the British squadron, and sixty-five in the Dutch. Lord Exmouth himself says in his dispatch: "There were awful movements during the conflict which I cannot now attempt to describe, occasioned by Salamé says that one of firing the ships so near us." the Algerine frigates, which was in flames, drifted towards the Queen Charlotte, within about fifty feet of her; but a breeze springing up, carried the burning frigate towards the town. The Algerine batteries around Lord Exmouth's division were silenced about ten o'clock, and were in a complete state of ruin and