Note 82 — THE PETTY PIRATES.

Up to 1618 Algiers was governed by a Pasha directly appointed by the Sultan; from 1618 the Pasha was chosen by the Janissaries and other militia subject to the veto of the Sultan; in 1671 the Janissaries first elected a Dey out of their own number, every soldier being eligible, and their Dey soon made the Sultan’s Pasha a lay figure; in 1710 the two offices were united in a Dey chosen by the soldiery. These parvenus were by no means ashamed of their origin or principles. Mohammed Dey (1720), getting into a passion with the French consul, exclaimed with more frankness than courtesy: “My mother sold sheeps’ feet, and my father sold neats’ tongues, but they would have been ashamed to expose for sale so worthless a tongue as thine.” Another time the Dey confessed with dignified naïveté to Consul Cole: “The Algerines are a company of rogues—and I am their Captain!”