I was much pleased with the general; and have since learnt, that he was a very worthy and benevolent man; and that he had paid great attention to the education of youth in Newfoundland; and that it was, in a degree, his ruling passion.[B] I wish I had then known as much of our school system, and of our system of public education at our Universities, as I do now; for I might have gratified his benevolent disposition by the recital. The ignorance of English gentlemen of the people of America, and of their education, is indeed surprising as well as mortifying. By their treatment of us, it is evident they consider us a sort of white savages, with minds as uncultivated, and dispositions as ferocious as their own _allies_, with their tomahawks and scalping knives. After conversing with this worthy Englishman, about the education of the common people in America, I could not but say to myself, little do you, good sir, and your haughty, and unfeeling captain imagine, that there are those among the hundred miserable men whom you keep confined in the hold of your ship, like so many Gallipago turtles, and who you allow to suffer for _want of sufficient food_; little do you think that there are among them those who have sufficient learning to lay the whole story of their sufferings before the American and English people; little do you imagine that the inhumane treatment of men every way as good as yourselves, is now recording, and will in due time be displayed to your mortification.
Our sailors, though half starved, confined and broken down by harsh treatment, always kept up the genuine Yankee character, which is that of being grateful and tractable by kind usage, but stern, inflexible and resentful at harsh treatment. One morning as the general and the captain of the Regulus were walking as usual on the quarter deck, one of our Yankee boys passed along the galley with his kid of "burgoo." He rested it on the edge of the hatch-way, while he was adjusting the rope ladder to descend with his "swill." The thing attracted the attention of the general, who asked the man, how many of his comrades eat of that quantity for their breakfast? "_Six Sir_," said the man, "_but it is fit food only for hogs_." This answer affronted the captain, who asked the man, in an angry tone, "_what part of America he came from?_" "near to BUNKER HILL, Sir--_if you ever heard of that place_." They looked at each other and smiled, turned about and continued their walk. This is what the English call _impudence_. Give it what name you please, it is that _something_ which will, one day, wrest the trident from the hands of Britannia, and place it with those who have more humanity, and more force of muscle, if not more cultivated powers of mind. There was a marine in the Regulus, who had been wounded on board the Shannon in the battle with the Chesapeake, who had a great antipathy to the Americans, and was continually casting reflections on the Americans generally. He one day got into a high dispute with one of our men, which ended in blows. This man had served on board the _Constitution_, when she captured the _Guerriere_ and afterwards the _Java_. After the two wranglers were separated, the marine complained to his officer, that he had been abused by one of the American prisoners, and it reaching the captain's ears, he ordered the American on the quarter deck, and inquired into the cause of the quarrel. When he had heard it all, he called the American sailor a d--d _coward_ for striking a wounded man. "_I am no coward, Sir_," said the high spirited Yankee; "_I was captain of a gun on board the_ Constitution _when she captured the_ Guerriere, _and afterwards when she took the_ Java. _Had I been a coward I should not have been there._" The captain called him an insolent _scoundrel_, and ordered him to his hole again. What the British naval commanders call insolence, is no more than the undaunted expression of their natural and habitual independence. When a British sailor is called by his captain, in an angry tone, on to the quarter-deck, he turns pale and trembles, like a thief before a country justice; but not so the American; he, if he be innocent, speaks his mind with a firm tone and steady countenance; and if he feels himself insulted, he is not afraid to deal in sarcasm. In the instances just mentioned, _Jonathan_ knew full well that the very name of _Bunker Hill_, the _Guerriere_, and the _Java_, was a deep mortification to _John Bull_. Actuated by this sort of feeling, the steady Romans shook the world.