Legislation of this sort was thoroughly in harmony with the policy pursued at that time by the Home Government in its dealings with the Colonies. Generations had yet to pass before any doubt as to its wisdom began to dawn in the minds of Englishmen. Had Bellamont’s instructions from his royal patron been confined to its furtherance, it would have been well for poor Kidd, and the reputations of Bellamont and sundry great personages in England. But they had, as has been seen, extended to the suppression of the alleged growth of piracy in New England. As a matter of fact, it may well be doubted whether piracy had, as alleged, been for several years on the increase in that part of the world. In the West Indies it had greatly diminished. Less than thirty years before, the buccaneers had been so numerous that, on receiving the directions of King Charles the Second to stop their depredations on the Spaniards, they had in defiance of his orders stormed the Castle of Chagres; and marching thence across the Isthmus, more than a thousand strong, sacked and burnt Panama itself in the face of the organized forces of the Spaniards. Now the great Brotherhood of the Coast had practically ceased to exist. Such piracy as still lingered on amongst the English speaking race was for the most part limited to the eastern seas and consisted mainly in depredations on the shipping of Mussulmans, Armenians, and the natives of India, collectively termed by seamen Moors. Without in any way extenuating the practice of plundering these people, it is only right that we should bear in mind, in considering the case of Kidd and his crew, the belief then widely prevalent amongst Europeans that there was little if any impropriety or disgrace attaching to the ill-treatment and robbery of black men by white. Witness, for example, the slave trade, and the conditions under which negroes were worked in the plantations. Moorish piracy still prevailed in the Mediterranean, attended by great cruelty to Europeans; and retaliation on the so-called Moors in the eastern seas must have seemed to the man in the street the most natural thing in the world. Darby Mullins, who was hung with Kidd, was no doubt voicing the opinion commonly held by seamen and others, not only in the plantations but in London and Bristol, when whilst expressing in his last moments to the Ordinary of Newgate his sincere contrition for his habits of swearing and cursing and profaning the Sabbath day, and his neglect to return thanks to his Creator for his preservation in an earthquake at Jamaica (sins of commission and omission which he regarded as really serious offences and for which he asked pardon), nevertheless protested in defence of his piracy under Culliford that “he had not known but that it was very lawful” (as he said he had been told) “to plunder ships and goods belonging to the enemies of Christianity.” We may indeed be permitted to doubt, whether King William himself would have pressed