This shews the frequent difficulty and danger of his undertakings: people would not tamely resign their lives or liberties, without a struggle.

They were sometimes prepared; were superior often, in many points of view, to these invaders of their liberty; there were an hundred accidental circumstances frequently in their favour.

These adventures therefore required all the skill, strength, agility, valour, and every thing, in short, that may be supposed to constitute heroism, to conduct them with success.

Upon this idea piratical expeditions first came into repute, and their frequency afterwards, together with the danger and fortitude, that were inseparably connected with them, brought them into such credit among the barbarous nations of antiquity, that of all human professions, piracy was the most honourable.[013] The notions then, which were thus annexed to piratical expeditions, did not fail to produce those consequences, which we have mentioned before.
They afforded an opportunity to the views of avarice and ambition, to conceal themselves under the mask of virtue.

They excited a spirit of enterprize, of all others the most irresistible, as it subsisted on the strongest principles of action, emolument and honour.