* * * English prisoners taken by the Americans have been
treated with the most remarkable tenderness and generosity, as numbers
who are safely returned to England most freely confess, to the honor
of our brethern in the colonies, and it is a fact, which can be well
attested in London, that this very surgeon on board the privateer,
after the battle of Lexington, April 19th, 1775, for many days
voluntarily and generously without fee or reward employed himself in
dressing the King's wounded soldiers, who but an hour before would
have shot him if they could have come at him, and in making a
collection for their refreshment, of wine, linen, money, etc., in the
town where he lived. * * * The capture of the privateer was, solely
owing to the ill-judged lenity and brotherly kindness of Captain
Johnson, who not considering his English prisoners in the same light
that he would French or Spanish, put them under no sort of
confinement, but permitted them to walk the decks as freely as his own
people at all times. Taking advantage of this indulgence the prisoners
one day watched their opportunity when most of the privateer's people
were below, and asleep, shut down the hatches, and making all fast,
had immediate possession of the vessel without using any force."
What the effect of this generous letter was we have no means of
discovering. It displays the sentiments of a large party in England,
who bitterly condemned the "unnatural war against the Colonies.
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