Captain Johnson, in his valuable _General History of the Pirates from their First Rise and Settlement in the Island of Providence to the present time_, begins with antiquity. He mounts up the dark backward abyss of time till he meets with the pirates who captured Julius Caesar, and were suppressed by Pompey. This is not necessary. Our pirate was a very different fellow from those broken men of the ancient world, the wrecks of States shattered by Rome and the victims of the usury of the Knights who collected in the creeks of Cilicia. It is not quite easy to say what he was, but we know well enough what he was not. He was not for many generations the recognised enemy of the human race. On the contrary, he was often a comparative respectable person, who was disposed to render service to his king and country at a crisis, even if he did not see his advantage in virtuous conduct. To begin with, he was only a seafaring man who carried on the universal practice of the Middle Ages after they had ceased to be recognised as legitimate. Then for a long time a pirate was not thought worthy of hanging until he had shown a hopelessly contumacious disposition by refusing the king's pardon several times. Sir William Monson, who was admiral to James I., saw no harm in recruiting well-known pirates for His Majesty's service. On the coast of Ireland he found Irish country gentlemen of respectable position, and the agents of London trading firms, engaged in friendly business transactions with these skimmers of the sea. The redoubted Captain Bartholomew Roberts, to skip over a century, went about the world recruiting for a well-organised piratical business, and there were many among his followers who would have been honest men if temptation had not come in their way, and who hastened to leave a life of vice so soon as the neighbourhood of one of His Majesty's cruisers made it dangerous. We ought not to speak of these men with harsh contempt. The king's government was largely responsible for their existence, by promising pardon to all who would come in before a given date. They came in and brought their booty with them. Captain Johnson had the pleasure of the personal acquaintance of several who were living in comfortable retirement at Rotherhithe or at Limehouse, and in the enjoyment, for aught we know to the contrary, of the respect of their neighbours. They had come in on a proclamation, and there was nothing more to be said against them. In many cases, no doubt, when the booty was spent they drifted back to the old irregular courses, and on that road those of them who did not get shot when boarding a galleon, or go down at sea, or die of starvation among the keys of the West Indies, did sooner or later contrive to overtake the gallows. But these men, if they were not quite so moral and orderly as Captain Singleton, or so romantic as the pirates of Michael Scott, were not altogether bloodthirsty, merciless scoundrels.