When I sing this song, I often get comments saying it is strange that the song seems to regard "piracy" as worse than slaving. Actually, the 1829 Act of Parliament outlawing the slave trade declared it to be a form of piracy. Logically enough, as the English were upset by the practice of the Barbary Pirates, which was to make slaves of Englishmen captured in the Mediterranian.

I would say these comments are anachronistic. A generation raised on "Pirates of the Caribbean" has learned to believe that "pirates" are just quaint early Libertarians. So piracy seems less threatening to us today than it seemed to our ancestors. But Parliament dealt the slave trade a shrewd blow by designating it piratical.