ransom, unless the United States agreed to pay him a small matter of $21,000 a year tribute, as we had paid the late lamented Hassan Pasha (may the grace of God rest his beautiful soul). That an Algerian pirate on the sands of Africa should have had the nerve to address such a demand, even in poetic prose, to the President of the United States, involves a disgraceful story, which we certainly would not print, except for the benefit of the theorists and pacifists aforementioned. And to prove for our own satisfaction the impotence of language as the only national ordnance. At the same time the delicate attention paid our envoys and the courtly language of the pirate's communications make a picture so charming as almost to spoil the moral.
The Dey of Algiers, the Emperor of Morocco, the Bey of Tripoli, and Hamouda Pasha, a ruler of Tunis, under the firm name of the Barbary States, constituted in themselves the foremost and most celebrated institute of piracy ever seen on the globe. Operating from
