The application was first made in the form of a civil request, through the consul. Bainbridge procured an audience, and respectfully, but distinctly, stated that a compliance would be such a departure from his orders as to put it out of the question. Hereupon the Dey reminded the American that the ship was in his power, and that what he now asked, he might take without asking, if it suited his royal pleasure. A protracted and spirited discussion, in which the consul joined, now followed, but all without effect. The Dey offered the alternatives of compliance, or slavery and capture, for the frigate and her crew, with war on the American trade. One of his arguments is worthy of being recorded, as it fully exposes the feeble policy of submission to any national wrong. He told the two American functionaries, that their country paid him tribute, already, which was an admission of their inferiority, as well as of their duty to obey him; and he chose to order this particular piece of service, in addition to the presents which he had just received. Bainbridge finally consented to do as desired. He appears to have been influenced in this decision, by the reasoning of Mr. O’Brien, the consul, who had himself been a slave in Algiers, not long before, and probably retained a lively impression of the power of the barbarian, on his own shores. It is not to be concealed, however, that temporizing in all such matters, had been the policy of America, and it would have required men of extraordinary moral courage to have opposed the wishes of the Dey, by a stern assertion of those principles, which alone can render a nation great. “To ask for nothing but what is right, and to submit to nothing that is wrong,” is an axiom more easily maintained on paper than in practice, where the chameleon-like policy of trade interferes to color principles; and O’Brien, a merchant in effect, and Bainbridge, who had so lately been in that pursuit himself, were not likely to overlook the besetting weakness of the nation. Still, it may be questioned if there was a man in the navy who felt a stronger desire to vindicate the true maxims of national independence than the subject of this memoir. He appears to have yielded solely to the arguments of the consul, and to his apprehensions for a trade that certainly had no other protection in that distant sea, than his own ship; and she would be the first sacrifice of the Dey’s resentment. It ought to be mentioned, too, that a base and selfish policy prevailed, in that day, on the subject of the Barbary Powers, among the principal maritime states of Europe. England, in particular, was supposed to wink at their irregularities, in the hope that it might have a tendency to throw a monopoly of the foreign navigation of the Mediterranean into the hands of those countries which, by means of their great navies, and their proximity to the African coast, were always ready to correct any serious evil that might affect themselves.