idea is ridiculous; but it is exactly as consistent as that Tripoli should say to the American nation,--'Give me tribute, or tremble under the chastisement of my navy!'" This was sharp language for a Consul to hold to a Secretary of State; but it was as meekly borne as the other indignities which came from Barbary. An occurrence in Algiers completes the picture of "Americans in the Mediterranean" in the year 1800. In October, the United States ship Washington, Captain Bainbridge, lay in that port, about to sail for home. The Dey sent for Consul O'Brien, and laid this alternative before him: either the Washington should take the Algerine Ambassador to Constantinople, or he, the Dey, would no longer hold to his friendship with the United States. O'Brien expostulated warmly, but in vain. He thought it his duty to submit. The Ambassador, his suite, amounting to two hundred persons, their luggage and stores, horses, sheep, and horned cattle, and their presents to the Sultan, of lions, tigers, and antelopes, were sent on board. The Algerine flag was hoisted at the main, saluted with seven guns, and the United States ship Washington weighed anchor for Constantinople. Eaton's rage boiled over when he heard of this freak of the Dey. He wrote to O'Brien,--"I frankly own, I would have lost the peace, and been myself impaled, rather than have yielded this concession. Will nothing rouse my country?"[1] When the news reached America, Mr. Jefferson was President. He was not roused. He regretted the affair; but hoped that time, and a more correct estimate of interest, would produce justice in the Dey's mind; and he seemed to believe that the majesty of pure reason, more potent than the music of Orpheus, "Dictas ob hoc lenire tigres, rabidosque leones," would soften piratical Turks. Mr. Madison's despatch to O'Brien on the subject is written in this spirit. "The sending to Constantinople the national ship-of-war, the George Washington, by force, under the Algerine flag, and for such a purpose, has deeply affected the sensibility, not only of the President, but of the people of the United States. Whatever temporary effects it may have had favorable to our interest, the indignity is of so serious a nature, _that it is not impossible that it may be deemed necessary, on a fit occasion, to revive the question._ Viewing it in this light, the President wishes that nothing may be said or done by you that may unnecessarily preclude the competent authority from animadverting on that transaction in any way that a vindication of the national honor may be thought to prescribe." Times have changed since then, and our national spirit with them. The Secretary's Quaker-like protest offers a ludicrous contrast to the wolf-to-lamb swagger of our modern diplomacy. What faithful Democrat of 1801 would have believed that the day would come of the Kostza affair, of the African right-of-search quarrel, the Greytown bombardment, and the seizure of Miramon's steamers?