At this trial, held at Dartmoor on the twenty-fifth day of March, one thousand eight hundred and fifteen, you, Reuben G. Beasley in effigy, are found guilty, by an impartial and judicious jury of your countrymen, upon the testimony of five thousand seven hundred witnesses, of depriving many hundreds of your countrymen of their lives, by the most wanton and most cruel deaths, by nakedness, starvation, and exposure to pestilence. It therefore becomes the duty of this court, as ought to be the duty of every court of justice, to pronounce that sentence of the law, which your manifold and heinous crimes so richly deserve.--And it is with the deepest regret that I am compelled to say, our country has been imposed upon, by a man whose crimes must cut him off from among the living. You this day must be hanged by the neck on the top of the prison No. 7, until you are dead; your body is then to be taken down and fastened to a stake, and burned to ashes, which are to be distributed to the winds, that your name may be forgotten, and your crimes no longer disgrace our nation. On hearing the above sentence, the compunction of his conscience now brought forth the following confession: CONFESSION. _Injured countrymen and fellow-citizens_: I this day, by the verdict of a just and impartial jury, and by the sentence of an impartial court, am to be made a public example, and receive that punishment which is so justly due to my many odious offences against the laws of God and my country; and being in a very few moments to make my exit from this world, do confess, in the presence of Almighty God, that for the first twelve months of my consulship I did most criminally neglect the American prisoners, who were dying daily for the want of my assistance, which I withheld through mercenary motives: the cries and petitions of my unfortunate countrymen I have always treated with the utmost disregard and contempt, but being fully convinced of all my past errors, I make this public and candid confession, in hopes that I may find mercy in the presence of a just and merciful God. I further do acknowledge, that I have been the means of detaining you in your present situation by neglecting to send you home, as I might have done, while the exchange was open for prisoners, which was not closed till June, eighteen hundred and thirteen; I likewise confess, that I have deprived great numbers of you of your regular turns of exchange, by filling the cartels with paroled officers, who were not entitled to the same; I must confess that had I have made proper application to the British government, and had I used my influence, I might have obtained the release of all the men discharged from his majesty’s ships of war; but being selfish, and swayed by despicable motives, I made no exertions for their relief. I do likewise confess, that after the second year of my consulship, I could no longer withhold from my unfortunate