ts.
"Give me leave to say, sir," he observed, "I say it with due deference
and respect, (and my knowledge of the facts, added to the importance
of the cause, and the stake I hold it in, must justify the freedom,)
that your affairs are in a more unpromising way than you seem to
apprehend.

"Your army, as mentioned in my last, is upon the eve of political
dissolution. True it is, you have voted a larger one in lieu of it;
but the season is late, and there is a material difference between
voting battalions, and raising men. In the latter, there are more
difficulties than Congress seem aware of; which makes it my duty (as I
have been informed of the prevailing sentiments of this army) to
inform them, that unless the pay of the officers (especially that of
the field officers) is raised, the chief part of those that are worth
retaining will leave the service at the expiration of the present
term; as the soldiers will also, if some greater encouragement is not
offered them, than twenty dollars and one hundred acres of land."

After urging in strong terms the necessity of a more liberal
compensation to the army, and stating that the British were actually
raising a regiment with a bounty of ten pounds sterling for each
recruit, he added, "when the pay and establishment of an officer once
become objects of interested attention, the sloth, negligence, and
even disobedience of orders, which at this time but too generally
prevail, will be purged off;--but while the service is viewed with
indifference; while the officer conceives that he is rather conferring
than receiving an obligation: there will be a total relaxation of all
order and discipline; and every thing will move heavily on, to the
great detriment of the service, and inexpressible trouble and vexation
of the general.

"The critical situation of our affairs at this time will justify my
saying, that no time is to be lost in making fruitless experiments. An
unavailing trial of a month, to get an army upon the terms proposed,
may render it impracticable to do it at all, and prove fatal to our
cause; as I am not sure whether any rubs in the way of our
enlistments, or unfavourable turn in our affairs, may not prove the
means of the enemy's recruiting men faster than we do."

After stating at large the confusion and delay, inseparable from the
circumstance that the appointments for the new army were to be made by
the states, the letter proceeds, "upon the present plan, I pla