ales crowd the prison ships, and take for husbands the ragged
American prisoners, provided they can get a few shillings by it! What
are we to think of the state of society in England, when two or three
sisters leave the house of their parents, and pass a week on board of
a newly arrived ship? What can be the sentiments of the daughters?
What the feelings of their mothers, their fathers, and their brothers?
In the South Sea Islands, young females know not what modesty means;
neither that nor chastity is a virtue in those regions.[O] But it is
not quite so in England; there this lewd conduct is a mark of
debasement, depravity and vice. The sea-ports of England, and the
_streets_ of her capital, and, indeed, of all her large cities are
filled with handsome women, who offer themselves as wives to men they
never saw before, for _a few shillings_; and yet this is the country
of which our reverend doctors, from the pulpit, assure us, contains
more religion and morality than any other of the same number of
inhabitants; nay, more, our governor has proclaimed it to the world
over, as being the very "bulwark of the religion we profess." If
cruelty to prisoners, cruelty to their own soldiers, if kidnapping
their mechanics, by press gangs, if shocking barbarity be exercised
towards prisoners, and if open, shameless lewdness, mark and disgrace
their sea-ports, their capital, and all their large cities, are the
modest and correct people, inhabiting the towns and villages of the
United States, to be affronted by being told publicly, that they have
less religion, less morality than the people of England? How long
shall we continue to be abused by folly and presumption? We,
Americans, are yet a modest, clean, and moral people; as much so as
the Swiss in Europe; and we feel ourselves offended, and disgusted
when our blind guides tell us to follow the example of the English in
their manners, and sexual conduct. Could I allow myself to
particularise the conduct of the fair sex, who crowd on board every
recently arrived ship, and who swarm on the shores, my readers would
confess that few scenes of the kind could exceed it. The freedom of
the American press will give to posterity a just picture of British
morals, in the reigns of George the 3d and 4th.

While laying in Plymouth harbor, we received the news of the _capture
of the City of Washington_; and the burning of its public buildings
with the library. The burning of the public buildings