The American recruiting service went on most wretchedly.—The returns which gen. Washington received from different quarters, were of so extraordinary a nature, that he suspected the most abominable fraud and embezzlement of the public money. The accounts of desertion almost surpassed belief, and afforded him the highest probability that officers were tempted, by the great bounty allowed, to exhibit a number of pretended recruits, that were never in reality inlisted. But the evil he complained of, was owing greatly to the prevailing method of inlisting men, viz. the paying of them the bounty, and then suffering them to ramble about the country, by which means they inlisted with half a dozen officers. Instead of being formidable by the middle or March, he wrote, [March 6.] “After the fifteenth, when gen. Lincoln’s militia leave us, we shall only have the remains of the five Virginia regiments, who do not amount altogether to more than five or six hundred men, and two of the other continental battalions very weak. The rest of our army is composed of small parties of militia from this state and Pennsylvania; and little dependence can be put upon the militia, as they come and go when they please, if the enemy do not move it will be a miracle; nothing but ignorance of our numbers, and situation, can protect us.” He has since owned, that during the latter part of this last winter, he and his army have remained at the mercy of the royal troops, with sometimes scarcely a sufficient body of men to mount the ordinary guards, liable every moment to be dissipated, if the enemy had only thought proper to march against them. The general’s whole force, including militia, at Morristown and the several out-posts, amounted often to not more than 1500 men; and it has been asserted, upon apparently good authority, that he repeatedly could not muster more at Morristown than between three and four hundred. In writing officially upon the subject to the governor and council of Connecticut the representation he gave of affairs drew tears from the eyes of those who heard the letter read. While gen. Washington was at this low ebb with his army, gentlemen of five thousand pounds fortune or more, and many others who were men of substance, though not equal to that, did duty as centinels at his doors and elsewhere.