possibly have allowed the devil to inspire one with a portion of his own infernal spirit of cruelty, in order to effect a separation, and keep apart two people, superficially resembling each other. It may be for good and wise purposes, in the order of Providence, that there should be a partition wall between us and Britain. We have had to deplore that three thousand miles of ocean is not half enough; for avarice, fashion and folly, are continually drawing us together; and these often drown the still small voice of patriotism, whose language is, "_Come out of her, O my people!_" There is nothing that tends so strongly to keep us asunder, as the different _dispositions_ of the two people. The Americans are a kind, humane, tender-hearted people, as free from cruelty as any nation upon earth; and possessing as much generosity towards an enemy they have vanquished, and who is at their mercy, as any people to be found on the records of the human kind. Their laws express it; the records of their courts prove it; the history of the war illustrates it; and I hope that all our actions declare it. We may change, and become as hard hearted and cruel as the English. It may be that we are now in the _chivalrous_ age, or that period of our political existence, which is the generous, youthful stage of a nation's life; this may pass away, and we may sink into the cold, phlegmatic, calculating cruelty of the present Britons; and become, like them, objects of hatred to our own descendants. Whatever we may, in the course of degeneration, become, we assert it, as an incontrovertible fact, that the Britons are now, and have been for many generations past, vastly our inferiors on the score of polished humanity. On this subject, we would refer the reader to the _History of England_, written by eminent Englishmen and Scotchmen, and to Shakespeare's historical plays; and to the records of their courts, the annals of Newgate, and of the Tower; and to their penal code, generally; but above all, to their horrid _military_ punishments, in their army, and in their navy; and then contrast the whole with the history of America; of her courts, and of her army, and navy punishments. We would not indulge invective, nor lightly give vent to the language of resentment; but truth and utility compels us to speak of the English as they really are. Their whole history marks them a hard hearted, cruel race, and such we prisoners have found them. We will not have recourse to so early a period as the reign of Richard the 3d, or Harry the 8th, or his cruel daughter Mary, but we refer to the latter part of Charles 2d, a reign of mirth, frolic and unusual gaiety of heart, and not a period of austerity and gloom. The instance we here adduce, was not the furious cruelty of a mob, or of exasperated soldiery storming a town; but of _courtiers_, privy counsellors, and advisers of the good humored Charles the 2d.