From this digression, let us return, and resume our Journal. We arrived off Portsmouth the fifth of October, 1813; and were visited by the health officer, and ordered to the Mother-bank, opposite that place, where vessels ride out their quarantine. The next day the ship was fumigated, and every exertion made by the officers to put her in a condition for inspection by the health-officer. Letters were fumigated by vinegar, or nitrous acid, before they were allowed to go out of the ship. Their attention was next turned to us, miserable prisoners. We were ordered to wash, and put on clean shirts. Being informed that many of us had not a second shirt to put on, the captain took down the names of such destitute men, but never supplied them with a single rag.
The prisoners were now as anxious to go on shore, and to know the extent of their misery, as the captain of the Regulous was to get rid of us. The most of us, therefore, joined heartily in the task of cleansing the ship, and in white-washing the lower deck, or the place we occupied. Some, either through laziness or resentment, refused to do any thing about it; but the rest of us said, that it was always customary in America, when we left a house, or a room we hired, to leave it clean, and it was ever deemed disreputable to leave an apartment dirty. The officers of the ship tried to make them, and began to threaten them, but they persisted in their refusal, and every attempt to force them was fruitless. I do not myself wonder that the British officers, so used to prompt and even servile obedience of their own men, were ready to knock some of our obstinate, saucy fellows, on the head. This brings to my mind the concise but just observation of an English traveller through the United States of America. After saying that the inhabitants south of the Hudson were a mixed race of English, Irish, Scotch, Dutch, Germans and Swedes, among whom you could observe no precise national character; he adds, "but as to New-England, they are all true English; and there you see one uniform trait of national manners, habits and dispositions.--The people are hardy, industrious, humane, obliging, obstinate and brave. By kind and courteous usage, mixed with flattery, you can lead them, like so many children, almost as you please;" _but_, he adds, "_the devil from h--l, with fire in one hand, and faggots in the other, cannot drive them_." Neither Cæsar, nor Tacitus ever drew a more true and concise character of the Gauls, or Germans, than this. Here is seen the transplanted Englishman, enjoying "_Indian freedom_," and therefore a little wilder than in his native soil of Albion; and yet it is surprising that a people, whose ancestors left England less than a century and a half ago, should be so little known to the present court and administration of Great Britain. Even the revolutionary war was not sufficient to teach _John Bull_, that his descendants had improved by transplantation, in all those qualities for which _stuffy John_ most values himself. The present race of Englishmen are puffed up, and blinded by what they _have been_, while their descendants in America are proud of what they are, and what they know _they shall be_.