The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1894-12-22
PRACTICALLY PIRATES
snoh were Some Of Our Early
American Ancestors

aS,1c11 We're SOHO VI W. ~
American Ancestors
,r.v sailed tho Seas In Guise Of Honest
T-.aor,. But Never Let slip IN OPP
nortun,ty to Swindte For
eixn Tradesmen.
Sea stealing, though they did not call
4 nv So harsh name, was Leading
Industry with the thrifty jewellers IN
his town two hundred years ago,
..r;tes Thomas A. Janvier in Harper's
uagazine That was good time for
at,,rdv adventure ahoat; and our we'll
,oettled New Workers were not the
xind then, any more than they are
,,ow TO let money-making chances slip
awav by default. Even id referring to
what is styled Out very erroneously)
The drowsy period of the Dutch DONNA
zion. the most romantic of our his
sorians have not ventured the sugges-
lion that anybody ever went to sleep
when there was bargain to be made;
and in the period to which now refer,
when the English fairly settled in pos
session of New York by twenty years
Of occupancy, exceeding wide awake
ness was the rule. Nor was anybody
troubled with squeamishness. There
fore il was that our townsfolk, palter-
ing no more with fortune than they
did with moral scruples, set themselves
briskly to collecting the revenues Of
the sea.
These revenues were raised by two
different systems, which may be
ikened, for convenience sake, to direct
and to indirect taxation. In the first
case, our,robust townspeople put out to
sea in private armed vessels ostenta-
tiously carrying letters of marque en-
titling them to war against the kings
enemies - which empowering docu-
ments they construed, as soon as they
had made an ofing from Sandy Hook,
rs emitting them to lay hands upon all
desirable property that they found
afloat under any flag.
The indirect method Of taxation had
in it less heroic quality than was in
volved in the direct levy; yet was it,
being safer in a business way and al
most as profitable, very extensively
carried on. Euphemism was we'll
thought of even then in New York:
wherefore this more conservative class
of sea-robbers posed squarely as honest
merchants engaged in what they
termed the Red sea trade. At the foot
of the letter, as our French cousins
saw, their position was well taken.
Their so-called merchant ships dropped
down the harbor into the bay and
thence out to the seward, carrying,
for merchant men, oddly-nixed lad
ings, whereof the main quantities were
arms and gunpowder and cannon-balfs
and lead, and strong spirits, and pro-
visions and general sea stores. Making
a course to the southeastward, they
would slide around the cape to some
convenient meeting place in the Indian
ocean, usually Madagascar, where they
would fall in with other ships-where-
of the lading was eastern stuffs, and
spices, and precious stones, and good
deal of deep-toned yellow~red Arabian
'rold. No information was volunteered
by their possessors, a rough-and-tumbie
daredevil Dushy-bearded set of men,
as to where these pleasing commodities
came from; nor did the New Workers
manifest an indiscreet curiosity being
content that they could exchange their
New York lading for the oriental
lading on terms which made the trans
action profitable lin Johnsonian phrase)
beyond the dreams of avarice. When
the exchange had been effected the
parties to it separated amicably; the
late vendors of the oriental goods be-
taking themselves, most gloriously
drunk on their prodigal purchases OF
West India rum, to parts unknown,
and the New Workers decorously re-
turning with their rich freightage to
their home port.
Neither of these methods Of acquir-
ing wealth on the high seas, the direct
or the indirect, seems to have received
the unqualified Endorsement of public
opinion in New York in those days
which came and went again two hun
dred years ago; yet both of them were
more than tolerated, and the Red sea
trade unquestionably was regarded as
q business rather than as & crime. Be-
cause of which liberal views in regard
to what might properly enough be
done off soundings, or at out-of-t the
way islands in the ocean sea, it is a
fact that at the fagend of the seven
teenth century our enterprising towns
folk were sufficiently prominent in
both lines of marine industry-as
pirates pure and simple, and as keen
traders driving hard bargains with
pirates in the purchase OF their stolen
goods-to fix upon themselves the ILL
tempered attention of pretty much the
whole of the civilized world.
SOME EXPENSIVE DRINKS.