Not But
That If We Consider The Nature Of The Case, With Coolness And
Deliberation, We Must Acknowledge The Justice, And Even Sagacity,
Of Employing For The Service Of The Public, Those Malefactors Who
Have Forfeited Their Title To The Privileges Of The Community.
Among the slaves at Ville Franche is a Piedmontese count,
condemned to the gallies for life, in consequence of having been
convicted of forgery.
He is permitted to live on shore; and gets
money by employing the other slaves to knit stockings for sale.
He appears always in the Turkish habit, and is in a fair way of
raising a better fortune than that which he has forfeited.
It is a great pity, however, and a manifest outrage against the
law of nations, as well as of humanity, to mix with those
banditti, the Moorish and Turkish prisoners who are taken in the
prosecution of open war. It is certainly no justification of this
barbarous practice, that the Christian prisoners are treated as
cruelly at Tunis and Algiers. It would be for the honour of
Christendom, to set an example of generosity to the Turks; and,
if they would not follow it, to join their naval forces, and
extirpate at once those nests of pirates, who have so long
infested the Mediterranean. Certainly, nothing can be more
shameful, than the treaties which France and the Maritime Powers
have concluded with those barbarians. They supply them with
artillery, arms, and ammunition, to disturb their neighbours.
They even pay them a sort of tribute, under the denomination of
presents; and often put up with insults tamely, for the sordid
consideration of a little gain in the way of commerce. They know
that Spain, Sardinia, and almost all the Catholic powers in the
Mediterranean, Adriatic, and Levant, are at perpetual war with
those Mahometans; that while Algiers, Tunis, and Sallee, maintain
armed cruisers at sea, those Christian powers will not run the
risque of trading in their own bottoms, but rather employ as
carriers the maritime nations, who are at peace with the
infidels. It is for our share of this advantage, that we
cultivate the piratical States of Barbary, and meanly purchase
passports of them, thus acknowledging them masters of the
Mediterranean.
The Sardinian gallies are mounted each with five-and-twenty oars,
and six guns, six-pounders, of a side, and a large piece of
artillery amidships, pointing ahead, which (so far as I am able
to judge) can never be used point-blank, without demolishing the
head or prow of the galley. The accommodation on board for the
officers is wretched. There is a paltry cabin in the poop for the
commander; but all the other officers lie below the slaves, in a
dungeon, where they have neither light, air, nor any degree of
quiet; half suffocated by the heat of the place; tormented by
fleas, bugs, and lice; and disturbed by the incessant noise over
head. The slaves lie upon the naked banks, without any other
covering than a tilt.
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