The New Hampshire Gazette

From NEW-YORK, April 12.
Should the British go a few steps further than they have already done, in the work of devastation and destruction--should they burn, sink and destroy all the shipping belonging to the United States, and hang all our seamen, even then, they would find individuals among us who would not blush to vindicate their enormities, and declare that they acted perfectly consistent with the strictest principles of justice and honor.--Who can doubt this, when he sees it affirmed in the Minerva, that our vessels are used by the British in the West-Indies better than by the French? This assertion is so notoriously false that we shall pay no regard to it. Some other parts of the same piece deserve attention. It says, that the British Captains, being authorized to take British seamen out of American vessels, are apt in doing this duty, to commit mistakes, and impress Americans. Our vindicator probably forgot, that a considerable part of our citizens that were enslaved, had protections. He forgot likewise, that those hundreds of American vessels, with neutral cargoes, could not possibly, even by the British themselves, be mistook for subjects of the King of Great Britain. He however confesses, that these (trifling) evils cannot be prevented but by negotiating. I hope he does not mean by negotiating such another Treaty with Great-Britain as has lately been concluded; if he does, the remedy may be worse than the disease, as one more treaty of the same stamp of the late one, would plunge America into the lowest abyss of infamy.