ught to be of general operation, and such
as will execute itself. Experience has shown that a peremptory draught
will be the only effectual one. If a draught for the war or for three
years can be effected, it ought to be made on every account; a shorter
period than a year is inadmissible.

"To one who has been witness to the evils brought upon us by short
enlistments, the system appears to have been pernicious beyond
description; and a crowd of motives present themselves to dictate a
change. It may easily be shown that all the misfortunes we have met
with in the military line, are to be attributed to this cause.

"Had we formed a permanent army in the beginning, which, by the
continuance of the same men in service, had been capable of
discipline, we never should have to retreat with a handful of men
across the Delaware in 1776, trembling for the fate of America, which
nothing but the infatuation of the enemy could have saved; we should
not have remained all the succeeding winter at their mercy, with
sometimes scarcely a sufficient body of men to mount the ordinary
guards, liable at every moment to be dissipated, if they had only
thought proper to march against us; we should not have been under the
necessity of fighting at Brandywine with an unequal number of raw
troops, and afterwards of seeing Philadelphia fall a prey to a
victorious army; we should not have been at Valley Forge with less
than half the force of the enemy, destitute of every thing in a
situation neither to resist nor to retire; we should not have seen New
York left with a handful of men, yet an overmatch for the main army of
these states, while the principal part of their force was detached for
the reduction of two of them; we should not have found ourselves this
spring so weak as to be insulted by five thousand men, unable to
protect our baggage and magazines, their security depending on a good
countenance, and a want of enterprise in the enemy; we should not
have been, the greatest part of the war, inferior to the enemy,
indebted for our safety to their inactivity, enduring frequently the
mortification of seeing inviting opportunities to ruin them, pass
unimproved for want of a force which the country was completely able
to afford; to see the country ravaged, our towns burnt, the
inhabitants plundered, abused, murdered, with impunity from the same
cause."

After presenting in detail the embarrassments under which the civil
departments of the army