From this detail of circumstances which arose in a few cases only,
coming accidentally to the knowledge of the Board they think
themselves authorized to presume by fair deduction what would be the
horrid history of the sufferings of the many who have expired under
their miseries (which therefore will remain forever untold) or who
having escaped from them, are yet too remote and too much dispersed
to bring together their well grounded accusations against these
prisoners.

They have seen that the conduct of the British officers, civil and
military, has in its general tenor, through the whole course of this
war, been savage & unprecedented among civilized nations; that our
officers and soldiers taken by them have been loaded with irons,
consigned to loathesome and crouded jails, dungeons, and prison
ships; supplied often with no food, generally with too little for
the sustenance of nature, and that little sometimes unsound and
unwholsome, whereby so many of them have perished that captivity and
miserable death have with them been almost synonimous; that they
have been transported beyond seas where their fate is out of the
reach of our enquiry, have been compelled to take arms against their
country, and by a new refinement in cruelty to become the murtherers
of their own brethren.

Their prisoners with us have, on the other hand, been treated with
moderation and humanity; they have been fed on all occasions with
wholesome and plentiful food, lodged comfortably, suffered to go at
large within extensive tracts of country, treated with liberal
hospitality, permitted to live in the families of our citizens, to
labour for themselves, to acquire and to enjoy property, and finally
to participate of the principal benefits of society while privileged
from all its burthens.

Reviewing this contrast which cannot be denied by our enemies
themselves in a single point, which has now been kept up during four
years of unremitted war, a term long enough to produce well founded
despair that our moderation may ever lead them into a practice of
humanity, called on by that justice which we owe to those who are
fighting the battles of their country, to deal out at length
miseries to their enemies, measure for measure, and to distress the
feelings of mankind by exhibiting to them spectacles of severe
retaliation, where we had long and vainly endeavoured to introduc