"It appears as clear to me as ever the sun did in its meridian brightness, that America never stood in more eminent need of the wise, patriotic, and spirited exertions of her sons than at this period, and if it is not a sufficient cause for general lamentation my misconception of the matter impresses it too strongly upon me that the States, separately, are too much engaged in their local concerns and have too many of their ablest men withdrawn from the general council for the good of the commonweal. In a word I think our political system may be compared to the mechanism of a clock and that we should derive a lesson from it, for it answers no good purpose to keep the smaller wheels in order if the greater one, which is the support and prime mover of the whole, is neglected. How far the latter is the case it does not become me to pronounce, but as there can be no harm in a pious wish for the good of one's country, I shall offer it as mine, that each would not only choose, but absolutely compel their ablest men to attend Congress, and that they would instruct them to go into a thorough investigation of the causes that have produced so many disagreeable effects in the army and country, in a word, that public abuses should be corrected. Without this it does not in my judgment require the spirit of divination to foretell the consequences of the present administration nor to how little purpose the States individually are framing constitutions, providing laws, and filling offices with the abilities of their ablest men. These, if the great whole is mismanaged, must sink in the general wreck, which will carry with it the remorse of thinking that we are lost by our own folly and negligence or by the desire, perhaps, of living in ease and tranquility during the accomplishment of so great a revolution, in the effecting of which the greatest abilities and the most honest men our American world affords ought to be employed.