d no
attention to their health or comfort. There are now, at this depot,
about _Twenty-Three Hundred and Fifty Americans_, who were
_impressed_, previously to the war, into the British service, by
English ships and English press-gangs. They are the stoutest and most
hardy looking men in the prison. This is easily accounted for. When
the British go on board an American merchant ship to look for English
sailors, they adopt one easy rule, viz.--they select the stoutest,
most hardy, and healthy looking men, and swear that they are
Englishmen. After they have selected one of these fine fellows, it is
in vain that he produces his protection, or any other evidence of his
American birth and citizenship.

We learn from these seamen, that as soon as conveyed on board the
British men of war, they are examined as to the length of time they
have been at sea; and according to the knowledge and experience they
appear to have, they are stationed; and if they grumble at the duty
assigned them, they are called mutinous rascals, and threatened with
the cat; the warrant officers are charged to watch them closely, lest
they should attempt to pervert the crew, and to prevent them from
sending letters from the ship to their friends. Should any letters be
detected on them, the sailors are charged, on pain of the severest
punishment, to deliver them to some of the commissioned officers.

If they complained of their hard fate to their messmates, they were
liable to punishment, and if they attempted to regain their liberty,
and were detected, they were stripped, tied up, and most cruelly and
disgracefully whipped, like a negro slave. Can any thing be conceived
more humiliating to the feelings of men, born and brought up as we all
are? Can we ever be cordial friends with such a people, even in time
of peace? Will ever a man of our country, or his children after him,
forgive this worse than Algerine treatment?

Several of the most intelligent of these impressed men related to me
the particulars of the treatment, they, at various times, received;
and I had committed them to paper; but they are too mean, low and
disgusting to be recorded. The pitiful evasions, unworthy arts, and
even falsehoods of some captains of his Britannic majesty's line of
battle ships, when a seaman produced his protection; or offered to
prove his nativity, or identify his person, as marked in his
descriptive roll, were such, as to make me bless my stars that I did
not bel