an illucidation of its origin, we will recur back to an
event which happened some days previous. Captain Shortland was at
the time, absent at Plymouth; but before going, he ordered the
contractor, or his clerk, to serve out one pound of indifferent,
hard bread, instead of one pound and a half of soft bread, their
usual allowance. This the prisoners refused to receive. They
waited all day in expectation of their usual allowance being
served out; but at sun-set, finding this would not be the case,
burst open the lower gates, and went up to the store, demanding to
have their bread.

The officers of the garrison, on being alarmed, and informed of
these proceedings, observed that it was no more than right the
prisoners should have their usual allowance, and strongly
reprobated Captain Shortland, in withholding it from them. They
were accordingly served with their bread, and quietly returned to
their prison. This circumstance, with the censures that were
thrown on his conduct, reached the ears of Shortland, on his
return home, and he must then have determined on the diabolical
plan of seizing the first slight pretext to turn in the military,
to butcher the prisoners for the gratification of his malice and
revenge. It unfortunately happened, that in the afternoon of the
6th of April, some boys who were playing ball in No. 7 yard,
knocked their ball over into the barrack yard, and on the sentry
in that yard refusing to throw it back to them, they picked a hole
in the wall, to get in after it.

This afforded Shortland his wished for pretext, and he took his
measures accordingly. He had all the garrison drawn up in the
military walk, additional numbers posted on the walls, and every
thing prepared, _before the alarm bell was rung_; this he
naturally concluded would draw the attention of a great number of
prisoners towards the gates, to learn the cause of the alarm,
while the turnkeys were dispatched into the yards to lock all the
doors but one, of each prison, to prevent the prisoners retreating
out of the way, before he had sufficiently wreaked his vengeance.

What adds peculiar weight to the belief of its being a
premeditated, determined massacre, are,

_First_--The sanguinary disposition manifested on every occasion
by Shortland, he having prior to this time, ordered the soldi