by the enemy in general. 2nd.  For the barbarous species of warfare which himself and his savage allies carried on in our western frontier. 3d.  For particular acts of barbarity, of which he himself was personally guilty, to some of our citizens in his power.  Any one of these charges was sufficient to justify the measures we took.  Of the truth of the first, yourselves are witnesses.  Your situation, indeed, seems to have been better since you were sent to New York; but reflect on what you suffered before that, and knew others of our countrymen to suffer, and what you know is now suffered by that more unhappy part of them, who are still confined on board the prison-ships of the enemy.  Proofs of the second charge, we have under Hamilton’s own hand:  and of the third, as sacred assurances as human testimony is capable of giving.  Humane conduct on our part, was found to produce no effect; the contrary, therefore, was to be tried.  If it produces a proper lenity to our citizens in captivity, it will have the effect we meant; if it does not, we shall return a severity as terrible as universal.  If the causes of our rigor against Hamilton were founded in truth, that rigor was just, and would not give right to the enemy to commence any new hostilities on their part:  and all such new severities are to be considered, not as retaliation, but as original and unprovoked.  If those causes were, not founded in truth, they should have denied them.  If, declining the tribunal of truth and reason, they choose to pervert this into a contest of cruelty and destruction, we will contend with them in that line, and measure out misery to those in our power, in that multiplied proportion which the advantage of superior numbers enables us to do.  We shall think it our particular duty, after the information we gather from the papers which have been laid before us, to pay very constant attention to your situation, and that of your fellow prisoners.  We hope that the prudence of the enemy will be your protection from injury; and we are assured that your regard for the honor of your country would not permit you to wish we should suffer ourselves to be bullied into an acquiescence, under every insult and cruelty they may choose to practise, and a fear to retaliate, lest you should be made to experience additional sufferings.  Their officers and soldiers in our hands are pledges for your safety:  we are determined to use them as such.  Iron will be retaliated by iron, but a great multiplication on distinguished objects; prison-ships by prison-ships, and like for like in general.  I do not mean by this to cover any officer who has acted, or shall act, improperly.  They say Captain Willing was guilty of great cruelties at the Natchez; if so, they do right in punishing him.  I would use any powers I have, for the punishment of any officer of our own, who should be guilty of excesses unjustifiable under the usages of civilized nations.  However, I do not find myself obliged to believe the charge against Captain Willing to be true, on the affirmation of the British commissary, because, in the next breath, he affirms no cruelties have as yet been inflicted on him.  Captain Willing has been in irons.