This practice assumed as a right in the first moments of our existence as an independent and commercial nation, has "grown with our growth," and the evil thereof has increased in proportion as our commercial rivalship has become more alarming to the pride and injustice of Great Britain. It is a practice which cannot be traced to any principle of justification; and yet we have seen the legislators of Massachusetts, clothed with a garb of official sanctity, send to the world a report, amounting almost to a denial, that such a practice was in existence! We pretend not to judge of their motives: but we remark, how soon they are confounded by the report of Shortland and Magrath. By that instrument it appears, that of thirty-eight who were killed or wounded, twelve were of the number of Impressed Americans, who had given themselves up as prisoners of war, upon the commencement of hostilities. If this be the correct proportion of their prisoners, who have been impressed from American vessels, and as it is an official document of British authority, we cannot believe the ratio to be less, we see the advocates of British magnanimity confounded and put to shame, by the testimony of those same British agents, whose justification they have so eagerly, though unsuccessfully attempted. It might, indeed, have been supposed, that after having so frequently been treated with the same contempt, they might have learned sufficient caution, at least, to stay their measures until the pleasure of their transatlantic friends should be known. But their overweening anxiety has only tended to plunge them in deeper embarrassments, and should teach them, that more prudence and less zeal in the cause of a national enemy, might secure them a safer retreat in the moments when those whose friendship they had so anxiously sought, had deserted, and condemned them.