and he found Irish country gentlemen of respectable
position, and the agents of London trading firms, engaged in friendly
business transactions with these skimmers of the sea. The redoubted
Captain Bartholomew Roberts, to skip over a century, went about the
world recruiting for a well-organised piratical business, and there were
many among his followers who would have been honest men if temptation
had not come in their way, and who hastened to leave a life of vice so
soon as the neighbourhood of one of His Majesty's cruisers made it
dangerous. We ought not to speak of these men with harsh contempt. The
king's government was largely responsible for their existence, by
promising pardon to all who would come in before a given date. They came
in and brought their booty with them. Captain Johnson had the pleasure
of the personal acquaintance of several who were living in comfortable
retirement at Rotherhithe or at Limehouse, and in the enjoyment, for
aught we know to the contrary, of the respect of their neighbours. They
had come in on a proclamation, and there was nothing more to be said
against them. In many cases, no doubt, when the booty was spent they
drifted back to the old irregular courses, and on that road those of
them who did not get shot when boarding a galleon, or go down at sea,
or die of starvation among the keys of the West Indies, did sooner or
later contrive to overtake the gallows. But these men, if they were not
quite so moral and orderly as Captain Singleton, or so romantic as the
pirates of Michael Scott, were not altogether bloodthirsty, merciless
scoundrels. Many of them had every intention of returning to their
country upon the appearance of the next proclamation, and as they saw
the prospect of a safe return for themselves they were not under the
necessity of acting on the rule that dead men tell no tales. They did
not make their prisoners walk the plank. They did not even burn their
prizes, but were often content with taking out such provisions and
portable property as their immediate occasions made desirable, and then
allowing the plundered merchant-ship to continue her voyage. They were
by no means so thoroughly hated as they ought to have been, to judge by
the more recent opinion held of the pirate.

In fact, till towards the end of the pirate's existence he was nearly as
much the product of the Government's management as of his own sins.
During Charles II.'s reign, his governors in Jamaica gave