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.
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