Portland Gazette, And Maine Advertiser

[From the Boston Weekly Messenger.]

British Humanity.

We have published in our paper this day the letter of Mr. Barclay, the British agent for prisoners resident in this country, to the editors of the New York Gazette; in which he has noticed a part of the falsehoods which have been invented, relative to the treatment of American prisoners by the British, for the purpose of exciting the passions of the people in aid of this wicked war. The deposition of Abraham Walter, to which most of his remarks relate, has appeared in nearly all the democratic and many of the federal papers of the Union. We cannot believe that so extensive a circulation has been given to it, with any expectation that reasonable men would give credit to the assertions that it contains. Nor should we think it worthy of the trouble of the notice which Mr. Barclay has given to it, did it not form a part of a system which has been acted upon by the advocates of the war, ever since the commencement of hostilities.

We would ask, with Mr. Barclay, why, if Abraham Walter's statements are true, Col. Gardner, our agent for prisoners in Quebec, has never made any complaint? Col. Gardner, as we may safely assert from our own knowledge of him, is not a man who would be disposed, from tenderness to the British character, to neglect the plain and obvious duties of his office, or to stifle any complaints which he could justly make against the British government.

But we do not propose here to go into an investigation of this subject. As it is before us, however, we will subjoin a very brief extract from the letter of a respectable young gentleman of this town, a democrat, and an officer in our army, who was wounded and taken prisoner in the battle near Cornwall, on the 11th November. It is addressed to his friend in this town, and is dated

Williamstown, Upper Canada, Nov. 14th, 1813.

"I receive every possible attention and assistance from the officers & soldiers of the British army."