While in the field, I think it may be kept from breaking out into acts of outrage; but when we retire into winter quarters (unless the storm be previously dissipated) I can not be at ease respecting the consequences.

It is high time for a peace." To judge rightly of the motives which produced this uneasy temper in the army, it will be necessary to recollect that the resolution of October, 1780, granting half pay for life to the officers, stood on the mere faith of a government possessing no funds enabling it to perform its engagements.

From requisitions alone, to be made on sovereign states, the supplies were to be drawn which should satisfy these meritorious public creditors; and the ill success attending these requisitions while the dangers of war were still impending, furnished melancholy presages of their unproductiveness in time of peace.

In addition to this reflection, of itself sufficient to disturb the tranquillity which the passage of the resolution had produced, were other considerations of decisive influence.

The dispositions manifested by congress itself were so unfriendly to the half pay establishment as to extinguish the hope that any funds the government might acquire, would be applied to that object.