And the reader will further recall the fact that this condition of affairs was due to the attitude of the British Government toward the pirates. England was entirely able to suppress the pirates, but instead of doing so she encouraged them, for the reason that in so doing she obtained almost a monopoly of the Mediterranean carrying trade for her merchant ships. She paid a small tribute to the pirates herself, and thus recognized the right of the pirates to prey on commerce in general. The tribute protected her ships, and the pirates were careful to see, as far as possible, that the ships of no other nation traded in that sea. By the treaties at the end of the first war with the pirates, the United States merchants obtained the right to trade in these waters, and with Yankee enterprise they secured a share of the trade, which was extremely annoying to the British merchants, to whom the War of 1812 came as a very great relief. Just how the British Government operated against the United States through the pirates will appear farther on. When war was declared to exist between the United States and Great Britain, Mr. Tobias Lear, who had been the private secretary of Washington, was the United States Consul-general located at Algiers. No sooner did the Dey of this nation hear of the new trouble of the American nation than he called upon Consul Lear for the sum of $27,000, which he claimed was due on the annual tribute. The United States had paid tribute by the Christian calendar, but the Dey demanded that it be paid by the Mohammedan, which threw the United States in arrears. Mr. Lear, in view of the trouble with England, yielded. At about this time an old American whaler, the _Alleghany_, arrived at Algiers with certain supplies which the United States had sent by way of tribute. The Dey promptly declared these stores were of inferior quality, and said: “The consul must depart, for I will not have a consul in my regency who does not cause everything to come exactly as he has ordered.” And Mr. Lear had to go in the _Alleghany_. The _Alleghany_ sailed to Gibraltar, where she was taken by the British and her crew imprisoned. But before Mr. Lear left Algiers he saw two large British ships come into the port loaded with powder, shot, and other naval supplies to the value of $160,000, as a present to the Dey from the British Government. Fitting out his fleet, that consisted of five frigates, three corvettes, and a lot of smaller vessels, the Dey made haste to go in search of Yankee merchantmen. Luckily only the brig _Edwin_ of Salem, with nine men on board, was found, but in his anxiety to enslave American citizens, the pirate commander took a citizen of Virginia, whom he found on a Spanish vessel, and sold him, although the vessel went free. [Illustration: A Typical Barbary Corsair. _From an engraving by Newton after a drawing by J. Charnock._]