ight might describe
the consular office of Algiers as "the next step to the infernal
regions." In 1808, merely because the usual tribute was late, the
Danish consul was seized and heavily ironed, made to sleep in the
common prison, and set to labour with the slaves. The whole consular
body rose as one man and obtained his release, but his wife died from
the shock. A French consul about the same time died from similar
treatment.

Were all these consuls maltreated for mere obstinacy about trifles?
The records of piracy will answer that question. So early as 1582,
when England was at peace with the Porte (and as she continued to be
for 220 years), gentlemen of good birth began to find a voyage in the
Mediterranean a perilous adventure. Two Scottish lairds, the Masters
of Morton and Oliphant, remained for years prisoners at Algiers. Sir
Thomas Roe, proceeding to his post as ambassador at Constantinople,
said that unless checked the Algerine pirates will brave even the
armies of kings at sea, and endanger the coasts [which would have been
no new thing], and reported that their last cruise had brought in
forty-nine British vessels, and that there would soon be one thousand
English slaves in Algiers: the pirates were even boasting that they
would go to England and fetch men out of their beds, as it was their
habit to do in Spain. And indeed it was but a few years later that
they sacked Baltimore in County Cork, and literally carried out their
threat. The Corsairs' galleons might be sighted at any moment off
Plymouth Hoe or Hartland Point, and the worthy merchants of Bristol,
commercial princes in their way, dared not send their richly laden
bottoms to sea for fear of a brush with the enemy.

The Reverend Devereux Spratt was captured off Youghal as he was
crossing only from Cork to Bristol, and so distressed was the good man
at the miserable condition of many of the slaves at Algiers, that when
he was ransomed he yielded to their entreaties and stayed a year or
two longer to comfort them with his holy offices.[84] It was
ministrations such as his that were most needed by the captives: of
bodily ill-treatment they had little to complain, but alienation from
their country, the loss of home and friends, the terrible fate too
often of wife and children--these were the instruments of despair and
disbelief in God's providence, and for such as were thus tormented the
clergyman was a minister of consolation. In the sad circle of the