The Enquirer

FRANKFORT. December 9.

On Tuesday last, about 20 British officers arrived in this place. For information and proceedings concerning them, see the legislative proceedings of Tuesday, which follow.

On yesterday the British officers who had been confined in a house rented in the town, were escorted to the penitentiary, in pursuance of the governor's order, where they will be kept in close confinement until the conduct of the British government towards our unfortunate citizens in their possession shall be further developed. However the necessity of this measure is to be deplored, stern justice and self-defence demand it; & if the British government should be so rash as to execute our citizens under any pretext whatever, the lives of their citizens must atone for its monstrous outrage on humanity and civilized warfare.

KENTUCKY LEGISLATURE,

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.

Monday, Dec 6, 1813

A message was received from the Governor, enclosing a letter from the Secretary of State, which follows. The message itself recommends that rooms should be allotted the British prisoners in the penitentiary, for their close confinement, according to the President's directions. The governor in his letter makes this remark. "Whilst the generous mind will deeply regret the occasion for such a measure, it will be recollected, that it has been forced upon us by the conduct of the enemy, who, during this war, have disregarded the usages of civilized hostility."

Extract of a letter from the Secretary of the Department of State, to the Governor of Kentucky.

DEPARTMENT OF STATE,

Nov. 27, 1813.

SIR,

The British government seems to have given to this war, every degree of savage barbarity and cruelty which it may be able to inflict. In the close of the late campaign, the British commander at Quebec, seized and sent to England 28 of our soldiers who had been made prisoners, to be tried for treason, on the pretence that they were British subjects. For so unjust, and outrageous an act, the President was bound to confine an equal number of British prisoners in the United States, which he did in the expectation, that the British government seeing the inevitable consequence of the first measure, would relax from it, or at least leave the affair in the state in which it had been placed, for accommodation by treaty. More recently, however, a measure of still greater injustice has been adopted. "The Prince Regent has ordered into close confinement 45 officers of the United States, upon the principle, as he says, of retaliation, expecting by the violence of this proceeding, to intimidate this government into a submission to the extravagant and unfounded claims of the British government.

The President has met this measure with equal decision, by ordering into like confinement 46 British officers, as a pledge for the safety of those on whom the British government seems disposed to wreak its vengeance.

"These officers are ordered to Frankfort in Kentucky to be confined here in the Penitentiary of that state, which is represented to be a building affording the two-fold advantages of good and safe accommodation.

"This step is taken in full confidence that every facility will be afforded to its complete execution by your excellency, that may be expected from a character so strongly attached to the Union, and decided in the support of all the necessary measures to secure success to the just war in which we are engaged."

Mr. Blackburn introduced a resolution authorising the appropriation of rooms in the Penitentiary, according to the governor's recommendation. With an immaterial amendment, it passed both houses unanimously. The prisoners will, therefore, be forthwith confined in the Penitentiary.