But the day of expedients was past. The zeal which had blazed forth with such energy at the beginning of the war was fast sinking to a fitful, smouldering flame. Individual interests were again taking the precedence of general interests. The moral sense of the people had contracted a deadly taint from daily contact with corruption. The spirit of gambling, confined in the beginning and lost to the eye, like Le Sage's Devil, had swollen to its full proportions, and, in the garb of speculation, was undermining the foundations of society. Rogues were growing rich; the honest men who were not already poor were daily growing poor. The laws that had been made in the view of propping the currency had served only to countenance unscrupulous men in paying their debts at a discount ruinous to the creditor. The laws against forestallers and engrossers, who, it was currently believed, were leagued against both army and country, were powerless, as such laws always are. Even Washington wished for a gallows like Haman's to hang them on; but the army was kept starving none the less. The seasons themselves--God's visible agents--seemed to combine against our cause. The years 1779 and 1780 were years of small crops. The winter of 1780 was severe far beyond the common severity even of a Northern winter. Provisions were scarce, suffering universal. Farmers, as if forgetting their dependence on rain and sunshine, had planted less than usual,--some from disaffection, some because they were irritated at having to give up their corn and cattle for worthless bills, and certificates which might prove equally worthless. Some, who were within reach of the enemy, preferred to sell to them, for they paid in silver and gold. There were riots in Philadelphia, put down at the point of the sword. There was mutiny in the army, and this, too, was put down by the strong hand,--though the fearful sufferings which had caused it justified it almost in the eye of sober reason.