CHAPTER VII.

April 30th, 1814.—The good effects of the abolition of all the apparatus of gambling were more and more apparent. Those who were heretofore employed merely in rattling of the dice and shuffling of cards, were now occupied in matters more becoming a rational and accountable being. They are now busily employed in reading, writing, drawing, and in studying arithmetic and navigation. Our ship begins to wear the appearance of a seminary of learning; for we have established numerous schools in various parts of the ship; and there appears a strong desire for improvement among the younger class of the prisoners. Every one is now convinced of the pernicious effects of gambling. In order to improve this praiseworthy disposition, the committee, which is in fact a board of selectmen, applied to the agent, Mr. Beasly, for stationery; he accordingly sent us a ream of writing paper, a few slates, and a few copies of a small treatise on arithmetic. His supply was by no means equal to our needs. Four times the number would have been in constant use; for it checked the emulation of some when they could not obtain what they wished.

It was pleasing to see a number of quite young men preferring education to gaming, noise and uproar; not but what we had among us a set of noisy, thoughtless, giggling idle fellows, mere drums, that sounded loud by reason of their emptiness. I never was so thoroughly convinced of the great importance of a good education, grounded on sound and serious principles, as since I have formed one among this congregation of wretchedness. I fear I shall betray my partiality if I should candidly write down my observations on this subject. We Americans are taught from our infancy not only to believe, but to think, compare and hold fast that which we find to be good. It seems to me that the Roman Catholic religion takes all the trouble of thinking and examining from off the mind of their believers. It is a scheme of rules and discipline not very unlike that of the military, and its punishments horrible. The Episcopal church of England treads close upon the heels of the papal, and has formed a system all cut and dried, like the Catholic, for a man to believe and be saved. Both of them make religion a stationary point, and not a motive of principle, forever progressing to perfection. One never dares to think or speak beyond the bounds of that common prayer book, established by the king and his council: whereas an American reads or hears read the bible from his infancy, and thereby acquires a freedom of thinking unknown even to the generality of Englishmen. I should never have thought so much on these subjects had I not remarked the difference of thinking, and behavior of the different people here crowded together. I do not presume to say which is best or which is worst; I can only say which is the freest from bigotry, and which is least trammelled by ordinances merely political.

The ragged and despised legislators of the Crown Prince prison ship, in solemn council between decks convened, never adopted a wiser measure than that of breaking up the dangerous habit of gambling. I had an idea that gaming often become the ruling passion; but I never before had an idea of its fascinating power. Some of our crew, of reputed good habits, became so bewitched with gaming that they plundered their companions and returned to their cards and wheels of fortune with a serious and anxious ardor, totally void of pleasantry, that seemed to me to border upon insanity.

After the gaming tables were demolished, some of our companions amused themselves by running, and tumbling, and scampering about the ship, disturbing those who were disposed to read, write and study navigation. Not content with this, they hollowed, ridiculed and insulted people passing in vessels and boats up and down the river. The commander had no small difficulty in putting a stop to this disgraceful river-slang.

On receiving a month's pay from Mr. Beasly, our agent, so called, every prisoner contributed three pence towards a fund for purchasing beer. They formed themselves into classes, like our collegians, and these appointed persons to sell it to those who wished for it; and each member of the class shared his proportion of the profits. This answered a very good purpose; it checked the monopolizers and muckworms that infested our ship, and fattened on our wastefulness. It also benefitted those who did not choose to drink beer, or porter, as they call it in England.

Some disagreeable and very mortifying occurrences took place among us in the course of this spring. Four of our men agreed together to go on to the quarter-deck and offer themselves to the commander, to enter into the service of the British. Their intention was discovered before they had an opportunity of putting it in execution. Two of them were caught, and two escaped. These two were arraigned and sentenced to be marked with the letter T, with Indian ink, pricked into their foreheads, being the initial of the word Traitor; after which, one went aft and entered; the other judged better, and remained with his countrymen. Had these been Englishmen we should have applauded them; and had they been Irishmen, we had no right to blame them; but we had the mortification to know that they were, by birth, Americans. Some thought the punishment was too severe, and which we had no right to inflict; others thought that the letter in their foreheads should have been F, for Federalist; for this was the name they ever afterwards were known by.

The Frenchmen were now (in the month of May) leaving the reach. Many of them had been in prison ever since 1803. These men are going home to live under a government forced upon them by foreigners! How unlike Americans, who had rather perish under tortures, than submit to the yoke of a foreigner. Our Frenchmen always spoke in raptures of the emperor Napoleon, and with contempt of Louis. When we spoke in praise of Bonaparte, they would throw their arms around us, and cry out, one bon American! But these men are all passion and no principle; they are fit for any thing but liberty. I cannot judge of the whole nation; but those I have seen here, are an abandoned set of men. I dare not write down their incredible vices. There has been a great cry of French influence by the British party in New England. I never thought it ever existed, and I am very certain that it never will exist, unless they, and we should become a very altered people. It is a happy circumstance that the wide Atlantic rolls between us and France, and between us and England.

Louis 18th, passed through Chatham this month, for France. The tops of the carriages, only, were to be seen by the prisoners. On this occasion, the cannon were firing from London to Sheerness. Our Frenchmen looked blacker than ever. They were, be sure, obliged to stick the white cockade on their hats, but they told us they had Bonaparte's cockade in their hearts. They checked the expression of their feelings lest it should retard their liberation.

On the news of taking of Paris, and of the flight of Bonaparte to Elba, all our prison-keepers were alive for joy.—"Thank God that I am an Englishman," says our commander, lieut. O.—and "thank God I am a Briton," says our surgeon, who is a Scotchman. John Bull is now on the very top of the steeple, hourrowing and swinging his hat, and crying out to the whole universe, "I'm thinking Johnny Bull, the magnanimous John Bull, the soul of the continental war, the protector of France, the restorer of his holiness the Pope, and of Ferdinand the Great, the terror and admiration of the whole world. I have nothing now left me to do, but to flog the yankees, and depose Madison; and burn the city of Washington, disperse the Congress, establish in their place the Hartford Convention, and raise Caleb Strong to the high rank his devotion merits. After this, I will divide the world between me and ——. Prevost, who is, beyond doubt, at this very moment, at the city of Hartford, in Connecticut; or at the city of North Hampton, the capital of my province of Massachusetts."

John Bull[G] is, be sure, an hearty old fellow, with some very good points in his odd character; but, dwelling on an island, he oft times betrays an ignorance of the world, and of himself, so that we cannot help laughing at him, once in a while, for his conceitedness. His ignorance of America, and Americans, is a source of ridicule among us all. An English lady said to one of the officers, who had the care of American prisoners in England, "I hear, Sir, that the Americans are very ingenious in the manufactory of many little articles, and should like to have some of them."—The officer replied that she might herself give directions to some of the Americans, whom he would direct to speak with her. "O," said she, "how can that be, I cannot speak their language!" The individuals of the navy of England, have pretty correct ideas of us; but the soldiery of England have betrayed their ignorance in a manner that is astonishing, and some times truly laughable, even among their officers, who have taken prisoners. To this ignorance of free and happy America, and to the very generally diffused blessings of a respectable education, which we all enjoy, is to be attributed the base treatment we have experienced in some periods of our painful captivity. Who could have entertained any respect, or good opinion of a set of miserable looking, half naked dirty men, such as we all were when we arrived in the different ships from America? Our own parents, our brothers and sisters, would not have recognized us as their relatives. The soldiers taken under Boestler, were the verriest looking vagabonds I ever saw. They resembled more the idea I have formed of the lowest tenants of St. Giles', than American citizens, born and bred up in a sort of Indian freedom, and living all their lives in plenty, and never knowing, until they came into the hands of the English, what it was to be pinched for food, or to be infested by vermin. This short, severe, and for America, most glorious war, has given all ranks of the British nation more correct ideas of that people, who have vanquished them in every contest, the ill-omened frigate Chesapeake alone excepted. During this short war, the British have learnt this important truth, that the Americans are a brave and skilful people, who, though they appear to differ among themselves, are all united against any attack from the English; and on our side we have learnt, that to carry on a war, as we have done, is pretty expensive.

The surgeon of this ship, who is a clever Scotchman, speaks of the English nation as in a state of starvation in the midst of her great power, and abounding wealth, and matchless glory; for the late capture of Paris, by the English, with a trifling assistance of the allies, has absolutely intoxicated the whole nation, so that every man of them talks as if he were drunk. He told me, "that although the ship carpenters, at Chatham, received two guineas a week, (which, by the way, is not so much as our carpenters receive in America) they were always poor, and could lay up nothing against the accidents of sickness; but that when such misfortunes came upon them, they, in common with the manufacturers of England, with their families, went upon the parish, or into some hospitals. He said, such laboring people laid out too much in flesh meat, and in porter; which was not the custom in Scotland; and that there it was considered an indelible disgrace to a family to be maintained by the parish; but that it was so common in England, that no disgrace was attached to it. We, in Scotland, said he, would work our hands off, before any of our family should ask the parish for assistance to live." It appears from authentic documents, published in London, that, young and old, there are little short of two millions of paupers in England, including common beggars, and persons in alms-houses; that is, upon an average, about one pauper, or beggar, to every four who are not paupers or beggars.

In the parish of St. Sepulcher, which is in the heart of the city of London, there were last January, (1816,)

Paupers in the work-house,227
Children at nurse,25
Insane poor,8
Relieved out of the house,92
Relieved in the country,9
361

Now the number of persons who pay poor rates in this parish, was at the same time, 612. The annual amount of the expenses about l6,600. This is from an official account given by Mr. Miller and Wm. Scaife. Such is the picture of the prosperity of the opulent city of London, when at peace with all the world; after they had put down Bonaparte, and set up the Pope, and Ferdinand the 7th, and restored Louis 18th to the throne of the Bourbons, and revived the holy inquisition, with all its fervours!—Read this, Americans, and bless God that your lots (lines) have fallen in pleasant places.

A century ago, a Scotch writer, Fletcher, of Saltoun, gives this account of the beggarly state of Scotland.—"There are," says he, "at this day in Scotland (besides a great many poor families meanly provided for by the church boxes, with others, who, by living upon bad food, fall into various diseases) two hundred thousand people begging from door to door. These are not only no way advantageous, but a very grievous burden to so poor a country; and though the number of them be perhaps double to what it was formerly, by reason of this present great distress, yet in all times there have been about one hundred thousand of those vagabonds (gipsies) who have lived without any regard or subjection either to the laws of the land, or even those of God and nature.

"No magistrate could ever discover, or be informed, which way one in a hundred of these wretches died, or that they were ever baptized. Many murders have been discovered among them; and they are not only a most unspeakable oppression to poor tenants (who, if they give not bread, or some kind of provisions to perhaps forty such villains in one day, are sure to be insulted by them;) but they rob many poor people who live in houses distant from any neighborhood. In years of plenty, many thousands of them meet together in the mountains, where they feast and riot for many days; and at country weddings, markets, burials, and other the like public occasions, they are to be seen, both man and woman, perpetually drunk, cursing, blaspheming, and fighting together."

Among the evils imported from Britain, America has never been cursed with that part of their population called Gipsies, forming in England an imperium in imperio. The famous "orders in council," can be clearly traced up to a Gipsy origin. The Londoners imitate and follow, but originate nothing.—One of the monarchs of Scotland acknowledged the Gipsies as a separate and independent race. The word is a corruption of Egyptians.

The Surgeon also talked much about the poor laws; and the taxes to support the vast number of the poor in England. I told him that in Massachusetts, which contained about half a million of people, we had not more than a thousand persons maintained at the public charge; and that this thousand included foreigners—English, Scotch, Irish, Germans, Danes, Swedes, and not a few negroes. He seemed surprized at this account; but after a little pause, he said, "it was just like Scotland, where they had very few poor; and of those, very few were so degraded in mind, as to go into an alms-house, like an Englishman."

The Doctor observed, "that the English were full of money; that they gave large and long credit, and that tailors, shoe-makers and hatters, gave a generous credit, and could afford so to do." He said, "that the 'capitalists' ruled and turned the wheels of the government at their will and pleasure; they have great influence in the nation, but they have no ancestors, nor any thing to boast of but their money, which gives them all their consequence; for it is true if they shut their purses, the whole machinery of the government must stop." I could have told this discontented Caledonian a different story. I could have told him that all our capitalists, merchants and monied men, especially in New England, had shut their purses against our administration, and yet, in spite of these detestable sons of mammon, our governmental machine went steadily on, while we vanquished our enemy by land and by sea; but I did not wish to mortify a civil, friendly man. "In England," continued he, "the merchant governs the cabinet; and the cabinet governs the parliament; and the sovereign governs both; but," said he, "the capitalists, (by which he meant the mercantile interest) govern the whole." I did not choose to controvert his opinions; but, "thinks-I-to-my-self," ah! Sawney, thou art mistaken; America, democratic America, has proved that the most democratical government upon the terraqueous globe, has gone steadily on to greatness, to victory and to glory, with the capitalists or mercantile interest, in direct opposition to its wondrous measures!

I believe that our surgeon was a good man, and not ill qualified in his profession; but no politician, and pretty strongly attached to his tribe; who, from his account, never spent much money in buying meat and strong beer. He talked much of the machine and wheels of government; from all which I concluded, that the court of St. James's was the hub, or nave, where all the spokes of the great wheel of the machine terminated; and that the laboring people, manufacturers, and merchants were doomed, all their days, to grease this wheel. It is remarkable that David, the royal Psalmist, among the severest of the curses bestowed on his enemies, expressly says, "Lord, make them like unto a wheel."