or liberties, without a struggle. They were sometimes prepared; were
superior often, in many points of view, to these invaders of their
liberty; there were an hundred accidental circumstances frequently in
their favour. These adventures therefore required all the skill,
strength, agility, valour, and every thing, in short, that may be
supposed to constitute heroism, to conduct them with success. Upon this
idea piratical expeditions first came into repute, and their frequency
afterwards, together with the danger and fortitude, that were
inseparably connected with them, brought them into such credit among the
barbarous nations of antiquity, that of all human professions, piracy
was the most honourable.[013]

The notions then, which were thus annexed to piratical expeditions, did
not fail to produce those consequences, which we have mentioned before.
They afforded an opportunity to the views of avarice and ambition, to
conceal themselves under the mask of virtue. They excited a spirit of
enterprize, of all others the most irresistible, as it subsisted on the
strongest principles of action, emolument and honour. Thus could the
vilest of passions be gratified with impunity. People were robbed,
stolen, murdered, under the pretended idea that these were reputable
adventures: every enormity in short was committed, and dressed up in the
habiliments of honour.

But as the notions of men in the less barbarous ages, which followed,
became more corrected and refined, the practice of piracy began
gradually to disappear. It had hitherto been supported on the grand
columns of _emolument_ and _honour_. When the latter therefore
was removed, it received a considerable shock; but, alas! it had still a
pillar for its support! _avarice_, which exists in all states, and
which is ready to turn every invention to its own ends, strained hard
for its preservation. It had been produced in the ages of barbarism; it
had been pointed out in those ages as lucrative, and under this notion
it was continued. People were still stolen; many were intercepted (some,
in their pursuits of pleasure, others, in the discharge of their several
occupations) by their own countrymen; who previously laid in wait for
them, and sold them afterwards for slaves; while others seized by
merchants, who traded on the different coasts, were torn from their
friends and connections, and carried into slavery. The merchants of
Thessaly, if we can credit Aristophanes[014] who n