fulness, if that forfeiture could restore peace and goodwill among mankind. As the feelings of your gentle bosom cannot but be congenial with mine, let me entreat you, madam, to use your persuasive art with your husband to endeavour to stop this cruel and destructive war, in which Britain can never succeed. Heaven can never countenance the barbarous and unmanly practice of the Britons in America, which savages would blush at, and which, if not discontinued, will soon be retaliated on Britain by a justly-enraged people. Should you fail in this—for I am persuaded that you will attempt it, and who can resist the power of such an advocate?—your endeavours to effect a general exchange of prisoners will be an act of humanity which will afford you golden feelings on a deathbed."
Paul Jones was a native of Scotland, the son of a gardener at Kirkcudbright. Having taken early to a seafaring life, he went to America, where he obtained the command of several merchant ships. At the commencement of the revolution in that country he entered ardently into the cause of the colonists against the mother country, and volunteered his services in that species of naval warfare which afterwards rendered his name so famous. In one of his letters, in reply to the charge that he had waged war against his native country, he says:—"I was indeed born in Britain, but I do not inherit the degenerate spirit of that fallen nation, which I at once lament and despise. It is far beneath me to reply to their hireling invectives. They are strangers to the inward approbation that greatly animates and rewards the man who draws his sword only in support of the dignity of freedom. America
