ery month, to hear and redress complaints, and to
correct abuses, and to enforce wholesome regulations. All written
communications, and all intercourse by letter passed through the hands
of captain Hutchinson. If the letters contained nothing of evil
tendency, they were suffered to pass; but if they contained any thing
which the agent deemed improper, they were detained.

We found our situation materially altered for the better. Our
allowance of food was more consonant to humanity than at Halifax, much
more to the villanous scheme of starvation on board the Regulus, and
the still more execrable Malabar. Our allowance of food here was half
a pound of beef and a gill of barley, one pound and a half of bread,
for five days in the week, and one pound of cod fish, and one pound of
potatoes, or one pound of smoked herring, the other two days; and
porter and small beer were allowed to be sold to us.--Boats with
garden vegetables visited the ship daily; so that we now lived in
clover compared with our former hard fare and cruel treatment. Upon
the whole, I believe that we fared as well as could be expected, all
things considered; and had such fare as we could do very well with;
not that we fared so well as the British prisoners fare in America.
Rich as the English nation is, it cannot well afford to feed us as we
feed the British prisoners; such is the difference in the two
countries in point of cheap food. On thanksgiving days, and on
Christmas days, and such like holy days, we, in America, used to treat
these European prisoners with geese, turkies, and plumb pudding. Many
of these fellows declared that they never in their lives sat down to a
table to a roasted turkey, or even a roasted goose. It is a fact, that
when the time approached for drafting the British prisoners in Boston
harbor, to send to Halifax to exchange them for our own men, several
of the _patriotic_ Englishmen, and many Irishmen, ran away; and when
taken showed as much chagrin as our men would have felt, had they
attempted to desert and run home from Halifax prison, and had been
seized and brought back! This is a curious fact, and worthy the
attention of the British politician. _An American, in England, pines
to get home; while an Englishman and an Irishman longs to become an
American citizen!_ Ye wise men of England! the far famed England! the
proud island whence we originally sprang, ponder well this fact; and
confess that it will finally operate a great ch