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 belong to their service. There were, however, some instances of noble and generous conduct; which came up to the idea we, once, entertained of English honor, before the solid bullion of the English naval character was beaten into such thin, such very thin gold leaf, as to gild so many thousands of their epauletted seamen. The officers of the _Poictiers_ were spoken of with respect; and, by what I could learn, the smaller the vessel, the worse treatment was experienced by our prisoners, and impressed seamen; your little-big-men being always the greatest tyrants. Among these small fry of the mistress of the ocean, "_you damned Yankee rascal_," was a common epithet. Our own land officers had often to remark, when they came in contact with the British, especially in the night, as at Bridgewater, and at the repulse at Fort Erie, that the British colonels and other officers, were heard repeatedly to use expressions of this sort--"No quarter to the _damned yankees_!" "Form! Form! for the _damned yankees_ are close upon us!" Colonel _Drummond's_ last words, when he surmounted the rampart at Fort Erie, was in the like style of language. How many lives have these expressions of contempt cost the British!