Page:Devonshire Characters and Strange Events.djvu/797

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THE PRINCETOWN MASSACRE
673

at the treatment which their fellow citizens had received.

The prisoners at once presented a Remonstrance against the perfunctory way in which the investigation had been carried out. They indignantly complained that although their committee had named fifty men as witnesses, only some of these were called, and these not the most important. They had written a letter of complaint to the Commissioners, who did not even trouble themselves to answer it.

The British Government and the American agent now bestirred themselves to dispatch the prisoners to the States as speedily as might be. The American Minister asked that Captain Shortland might be placed on his trial, but did not press the demand, as this would have entailed the bringing back of the principal witnesses against him from their homes in the States. Lord Castlereagh promised on the part of the British Government ample indemnification in money to the wounded and maimed for life, and to the widows of those who had been killed, but this the United States Government with dignity declined.

It is remarkable how reticent on the event were the English papers at the time. Both England and America were heartily tired of the war which profited neither, and were willing to let the unfortunate affair drop out of consideration. Before the prisoners departed from Princetown, they held a mock trial and condemnation of Mr. Beasley, and hung him in effigy. Even when they departed, he took no pains to provide them with suitable clothes, and some of them had to tramp barefooted to Plymouth. They departed, marching under a banner on which was depicted Columbia weeping over her murdered citizens. They were dismissed from the prison on 19th April, but the investiga-