of success in all ranks of the
people which was necessary to unite them in so arduous a cause.' As
early as November, 1775, Washington wrote, speaking of military
arrangements: 'Such a dearth of public spirit, and such want of
virtue--such stock-jobbing and fertility in all the low arts to obtain
advantage of one kind or another, I never saw before, and pray God's
mercy that I may never be witness to it again.' Such a 'mercenary
spirit' pervaded the whole of the troops that he should not have been
'at all surprised at any disaster.' At the same date, besides desertion
of thirty or forty soldiers at a time, he speaks of the practice of
plundering as so rife that 'no man is secure in his effects, and
scarcely in his person.' People were 'frightened out of their houses
under pretence of those houses being ordered to be burnt, with a view of
seizing the goods;' and to conceal the villainy more effectually, some
houses were actually burned down. On February 28th, 1777, 'the
scandalous loss, waste, and private appropriation of public arms during
the last campaign' had been 'beyond all conception.' Officers drew
'large sums under pretence of paying their men, and appropriated them.'

"'Can we carry on the war much longer?' Washington asks in 1778, after
the treaty with France and the appearance of the French fleet off the
coast. 'Certainly not, unless some measures can be devised and speedily
executed to restore the credit of our currency and restrain extortion
and punish forestallers.' A few days later: 'To make and extort money in
every shape that can be devised, and at the same time to decry its
value, seems to have become a mere business and an epidemical disease.'
On December 30th, 1778, 'speculation, peculation, and an insatiable
thirst for riches seems to have got the better of every consideration,
and almost of every order of men; * * party disputes and personal
quarrels are the great business of the day (in Congress), whilst the
momentous concerns of an empire, a great and accumulating debt, ruined
finances, depreciated money, and want of credit, which in its
consequences is the want of everything, are but secondary
considerations."

"DECLINE OF PATRIOTIC FEELING ON THE PART OF THE AMERICANS.

"After the first loan had been obtained from France and spent, and a
further one was granted in 1782, so utterly unpatriotic and selfish was
known to be the temper of the people that the loan had to be kept
secret, in orde