The efforts of General Washington to obtain a permanent military force, or its best substitute, a regular system for filling the vacant ranks with draughts who should join the army on the first day of January in each year, were still continued. Notwithstanding the embarrassments with which congress was surrounded, it is not easy to find adequate reasons for the neglect of representations so interesting, and of recommendations apparently so essential to the safety of the United States. [Sidenote: Parties in Congress.] Private letters disclose the fact that two parties still agitated congress. One entered fully into the views of the Commander-in-chief. The other, jealous of the army, and apprehensive of its hostility to liberty when peace should be restored, remained unwilling to give stability to its constitution by increasing the numbers who were to serve during the war. They seemed to dread the danger from the enemy to which its fluctuations would expose them, less than the danger which might be apprehended for the civil authority from its permanent character. They caught with avidity at every intelligence which encouraged the flattering hope of a speedy peace,[49] but entered reluctantly into measures founded on the supposition that the war might be of long duration. Perfectly acquainted with the extent of the jealousies entertained on this subject, although, to use his own expressions to a friend, "Heaven knows how unjustly," General Washington had foreborne to press the necessity of regular and timely reinforcements to his army so constantly and so earnestly as his own judgment directed. But the experience of every campaign furnished such strong additional evidences of the impolicy and danger of continuing to rely on temporary expedients, and the uncertainty of collecting a force to co-operate with the auxiliaries from France was so peculiarly embarrassing, that he at length resolved to conquer the delicacy by which he had been in some degree restrained, and to open himself fully on the subject which he deemed more essential than any other to the success of the war.