resents" were
received. The presence of a remonstrating admiral in the bay was a new
source of danger; for the consul would probably be thrown into prison
and his family turned homeless into the streets, while his dragoman
received a thousand stripes of the bastinado. When the French shelled
Algiers in 1683, the Vicar Apostolic, Jean de Vacher, who was acting
as consul, and had worked untiringly among the poor captives for
thirty-six years, was, by order of Mezzomorto, with many of his
countrymen, blown from the cannon's mouth;[83] and the same thing
happened to his successor in 1688, when forty-eight other Frenchmen
suffered the same barbarous death. The most humiliating etiquette was
observed in the Dey's court: the consul must remove his shoes and
sword, and reverently kiss the rascal's hand. The Hon. Archibald
Campbell Fraser, in 1767, was the first consul who flatly refused to
pay this unparalleled act of homage, and he was told, in a few years,
that the Dey had no occasion for him, and he might go--as if he were
the Dey's servant. "Dear friend of this our kingdom," wrote that
potentate to H. M. George III. of England, "I gave him my orders,--and
he was insolent!" Mr. Fraser went, but was sent back to be reinstated
by a squadron of His Majesty's ships. Admiral Sir Peter Denis sailed
into Algiers Bay, and having ascertained that the Dey would not
consent to receive Mr. Fraser again, sailed out again. His Majesty's
Government expressed themselves as completely satisfied with the
admiral's action, and resolved to leave the Dey to his reflections.
Finally, in the very next year, King George accepts his friend of
Algiers' excuses, and appoints a new consul, specially charged "to
conduct himself in a manner agreeable to you." The nation paid a
pension of L600 a year to Mr. Fraser as indemnity for its Government's
poltroonery.

Every fresh instance of submission naturally swelled the overweening
insolence of the Deys. A consul had a Maltese cook: the Dey objected
to the Maltese, and took the man by force from the consul's house and
sent him away in irons. If the consul objected, he might go too. When
Captain Hope, of H.M.S. _Romulus_, arrived at Algiers, he received no
salute; the consul was ordered to go aboard, leaving his very linen
behind him; and frigate and consul were ordered out of the harbour.
Consul Falcon, so late as 1803, was arrested on a trumped-up charge,
and forcibly expelled the city: truly Consul Cartwr