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 change in our respective countries; and that your thousand ships, your vast commerce, and your immense (factitious) riches cannot alter it. This inclination, or disposition, growing up in the hearts of that class of your subjects who are more disposed to follow the bent of their natural appetites than to cultivate patriotic opinions, will one day hoist our "_bits of striped bunting_" over those of your now predominating flag, and you long sighted politicians, see it as well as I do. The hard fare of your sailors and soldiers, the scoundrelism of _some_ of your officers, especially those concerned in your provision departments; but above all, your _shocking cruel punishments_ in your navy and in your _army_, have lessened their attachment to their native country. England has, from the beginning, blundered most wretchedly, for want of consulting the human heart, in preference to musty parchments; and