A violent dispute now took place between Bruce and the dey about passports. On the taking of Minorca by the French, a number of English passports fell into the hands of the enemy; and the French governor, naturally wishing to embroil England in disputes with the Barbary States, filled up the blanks of these passports, and then sold them to Spaniards, Neapolitans, and other enemies of the Barbary regencies. As soon as this fraud was detected, the British governors of Gibraltar and Mahon furnished the ships of their nation with written certificates, which they imprudently termed _Passavans_: but these pirates not being able to read them, and observing that they differed in shape and form from the old printed passports, inveighed against the supposed duplicity of the English, and importuned their master the dey to order every ship to be seized which carried a passavant. Bruce opposed this counsel with steady resolution; but the old dey, holding several passavans in his hand, answered him, with great emotion, in these very memorable terms: "The British government knows that we can neither read nor write; no, not even our own language. We are ignorant soldiers and sailors--robbers, if you will--though we do not wish to rob you. War is our trade, and we live by that only. Tell me how my cruisers are to know all these different writings and seals?" Bruce, neither intimidated nor convinced by the savage eloquence of the dey, again remonstrated; upon which he was disowned as consul, his dragoman was taken from him, and he was ordered to quit the country in three days. "In reply," says Bruce, "I begged the dey to excuse me if I considered myself still as British consul, and if I denied it to be in the power of any foreign prince to annul my commission." An English ship happening to arrive about this time with a passavant, was broken in pieces, and the crew hurried into slavery. Bruce now prepared to embark, but the storm suddenly subsided. The unruly passions of the dey, though deaf to reason, had listened to the subtle admonitions of his officers, who explained to him the ruinous consequences of a war with England. Regular printed passports arrived, and "thus ended," says Bruce, "an affair the least pleasing, the least profitable, and one of the most dangerous in which I was ever engaged." In communicating intelligence of his own dismissal, and of the above proceedings of the dey to Lord Halifax, Bruce again recommended that the remedy of force, that actual cautery, should be applied; and always ready to share in every service of danger which he conceived it his duty to propose, he offered to return with any expedition against the place. "I shall always esteem it," he says, "an honour to venture my life in his majesty's service, without rank or reward, in the station he shall be pleased to employ me."