With respect to the second, I can vouch for his account of the poisoning the spirits at Benedict being perfectly true. In consequence of what had taken place, if we wished to eat or drink anything that was found in their houses placed out ready for us upon their tables, we used to force the natives to eat a part first, that, in the event of its being poisoned, they might die with the Britishers. We used occasionally to purchase cattle from the Americans. The plan agreed on was this: they were to drive them down to a certain point, where we were to land and take possession; for the inhabitants being all militiamen, and having too much patriotism to sell food to “King George’s men,” they used to say, “put the money under such a stone or tree, pointing to it, and then we can pick it up, and say we found it.” More ways than one to cheat the old gentleman. Having seen in some publications several comments upon our mode of warfare in America, and no person yet ever having taken the trouble to place the facts before the public in its different bearings, it is high time that our side of the question should appear. According to the old proverb, “there are always two sides to a story.” The truth of the matter was this:-- At the commencement of hostilities, America invaded Upper Canada, took York Town, and at the very beginning of a severe winter, having first sacked the place, and turned the inhabitants out into the snow to perish, burnt it to the ground. Had it been taken by storm, after a severe resistance, the laws of war would have sanctioned the proceedings; but the case was far different, little or no resistance being made. General Sir George Prevost wrote a letter of remonstrance, not only to the American officer commanding the division, but also to the Government, reprobating the mode of warfare they had just adopted, and calling upon both to disapprove of it by a public manifesto, and punish the parties concerned. An evasive answer was returned, and we got no redress. Sir George Prevost sent copies of the correspondence to the naval commander-in-chief, and retaliation was in consequence determined upon; and that their Government might feel we had the power to repay the favour they had conferred upon poor York Town, and other places, we had orders to destroy all public buildings, and such private houses also as had been fortified or fired from, inasmuch as they had been placed in the light of a fortress; _and the blaze that burnt York, in Upper Canada, reached Washington_. This, and the endeavouring to destroy our men-of-war by torpedoes,--the blowing up of Lieut. Geddes, and the barge’s crew of H.M. Ship _Ramilies_ (74), by means of gun locks fixed in barrels of powder, with lines made fast to casks of flour, biscuits, or other “notions,” as Jonathan used to call them,--were among the causes which led to our system of warfare.