e
Algerians, and an English pass--which tradition says the illiterate
Corsairs identified by measuring its enscrolled border, instead of by
reading--protected any vessel carrying it. American ships, however, were
peculiarly the prey of the Algerians, and many an American sailor was sold
by them into slavery until Decatur and Rodgers in 1805 thrashed the
piratical states of North Africa into recognition of American power. In
1794, however, the Americans were not eager for war, and diplomats strove
to arrange a treaty which would protect American shipping, while Congress
prudently ordered the beginning of six frigates, work to be stopped if
peace should be made with the Dey. The treaty--not one very honorable to
us--was indeed made some months later, and the frigates long remained
unfinished.

It has been the fashion of late years to sneer at our second war with
England as unnecessary and inconclusive. But no one who studies the
records of the life, industry, and material interests of our people during
the years between the adoption of the Constitution and the outbreak of
that war can fail to wonder that it did not come sooner, and that it was
not a war with France as well as England. For our people were then
essentially a maritime people. Their greatest single manufacturing
industry was ship-building. The fisheries--whale, herring, and
cod--employed thousands of their men and supported more than one
considerable town. The markets for their products lay beyond seas, and for
their commerce an undisputed right to the peaceful passage of the ocean
was necessary. Yet England and France, prosecuting their own quarrel,
fairly ground American shipping as between two millstones. Our sailors
were pressed, our ships seized, their cargoes stolen, under hollow forms
of law. The high seas were treated as though they were the hunting
preserves of these nations and American ships were quail and rabbits. The
London "Naval Chronicle" at that time, and for long after, bore at the
head of its columns the boastful lines:

"The sea and waves are Britain's broad domain,
And not a sail but by permission spreads."

And France, while vigorously denying the maxim in so far as it related to
British domination, was not able to see that the ocean could be no one
nation's domain, but must belong equally to all. It was the time when the
French were eloquently discoursing of the rights of man; but they did not
appear to regard the peaceful n