ressed his
lessons, and excited their activity with a rope's end which he carried
in his hat. The poor fellows were extremely anxious to avoid such
repeated hard arguments; and they kept at as great a distance from
their tyrant as possible, who seemed to delight in beating them. It
appeared to me to be far out-doing in cruelty, the Algerines. They
looked melancholy, and at times, very sad. May America never become
the greatest of naval powers, if to attain it, she must allow a brutal
sailor to treat a citizen, _kidnapped_ from his family in the streets
of our cities, worse than we use a dog. I again repeat it, for the
thousandth time, the English are a hard hearted, cruel and barbarous
race; and, on this account alone, I have often been ashamed, that we,
Americans, descended mostly from them. When a man is ill used, it
invites others to insult him. One of our prisoners, who had been
treated with a drink of grog, took out his knife, and, as the
cockney's face was turned the other way, cut off one skirt of his long
coat. This excited peals of laughter. When the poor Londoner saw that
this was done by a roguish American, at the instigation of his own
countrymen, the tear stood in his eye. Even our jolly, big bellied
captain, enjoyed the joke, and ordered the boatswain's mate to cut off
the other skirt, who, after viewing him amidst shouts of laughter,
damned him for a land lubber, and said, now he had lost his ring-tail,
he looked like a gentleman sailor.

Although our good natured captain laughed at this joke, I confess I
could not; all the horrors of impressment rushed on my mind. This
mechanic may have left a wife and children, suffering and starving,
from having her husband and their father kidnapped, like a negro on
the coast of Guinea, and held in worse than negro slavery. But this is
_Old England_, the residence of liberty and equal laws; and the
_bulwark of our holy religion_! The crimes of nations are punished in
this world; and we may venture to predict, that _the impressment of
seamen_, and _cruel military punishments_, will operate the downfal of
this splendid imposter, whose proper emblem is a bloated figure,
seated on a throne, made of dead mens' bones, with a crown on its
head, a sword in one hand, and a cup filled with the tears of widows
and orphans in the other.

Mr. Peel, a member of the British parliament, delivered an unfeeling
speech relative to Ireland, in which he speaks of their _untameable
fero