On April 10th, 1682 (O.S.), "Articles of peace and commerce between the
most serene and mighty Prince Charles II., by the Grace of God King of
Great Britain, etc., and the most illustrious (_sic_) Lord, the Bashaw,
Dey, and Aga, Governor of the famous city of Algiers in Barbary," were
concluded by "Arthur Herbert, Esquire, Admiral of His Majesty's Fleet." It
need hardly be said that such a treaty as this was not worth the paper on
which it was written; that the barbarians by whom it was signed were as
ignorant as they were unprincipled, and that the only argument which they
understood at that, or any other time, was that of the right of the
strongest.
When we of the present day read of the deeds of the corsairs we are filled
with horror, we fail to understand how such things could have been
tolerated, we seek for some explanation. When we hear of a "League of
Christian Princes," and find that all its members could accomplish was to
turn their arms the one against the other, we are even still more puzzled.
What was it, then, that lay at the root of this problem? The answer would
appear to be in the ethical standpoint of the sixteenth century. We are so
accustomed in the present day to hear of the rights of man that we are apt
to forget that, in the time of Barbarossa, of Dragut, of Charles V., and
the Medicean Popes such a thing did not exist, and the only rights
possessed by the common man were those vouchsafed to him by his sovereign
lord.
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