"Before I conclude there are one or two points more upon which I will add an observation or two. The first is the indecision of Congress and the delay used in coming to determinations on matters referred to them. This is productive of a variety of inconveniences, and an early decision, in many cases, though it should be against the measure submitted, would be attended with less pernicious effects. Some new plan might then be tried, but while the matter is held in suspense nothing can be attempted. The other point is the jealousy which Congress unhappily entertain of the army, and which, if reports are right, some members labor to establish. You may be assured there is nothing more injurious or more unfounded. This jealousy stands upon the commonly received opinion, which under proper limitations is certainly true, that standing armies are dangerous to a State. The prejudices in other countries have only gone to them in time of peace, and these from their not having in general cases any of the ties, the concerns, or interests of citizens, or any other dependence than what flowed from their military employ; in short, from their being mercenaries, hirelings. It is our policy to be prejudiced against them in time of war, though they are citizens, having all the ties and interests of citizens, and in most cases property totally unconnected with the military line. "If we would pursue a right system of policy, in my opinion, there should be none of these distinctions. We should all, Congress and army, be considered as one people, embarked in one cause, in one interest, acting on the same principle and to the same end. The distinction, the jealousies set up, or perhaps only incautiously let out, can answer not a single good purpose. They are impolitic in the extreme. Among individuals the most certain way to make a man your enemy is to tell him you esteem him such. So with public bodies, and the very jealousy which the narrow politics of some may affect to entertain of the army, in order to a due subordination to the supreme civil authority, is a likely means to produce a contrary effect--to incline it to the pursuit of those measures which they may wish it to avoid. It is unjust because no order of men in the thirteen States has paid a more sacred regard to the proceedings of Congress than the army, for without arrogance or the smallest deviation from truth it may be said that no history now extant can furnish an instance of an army's suffering such uncommon hardships as ours has done, and bearing them with the same patience and fortitude. To see men without clothes to cover their nakedness, without blankets to lie on, without shoes (for the want of which their marches might be traced by the blood from their feet), and almost as often without provisions as with them, marching through the frost and snow, and at Christmas taking up their winter quarters within a day's march of the enemy, without a house or hut to cover them till they could be built,