There is of late years a great desire for freedom in all the colonies, and men are disposed to dispute the too royal sense of prerogative on the part of the governors. Whenever, as now, money is to be voted, the houses in the several colonies are apt to use the occasion to dispute it, and to bargain for something else as a reward for their grant of supplies. The withholding of money has been the chief means of governing kings by our own Commons. I blame it not. But this present reluctance is without cause――foolish, and at a wrong season. As to the difficulty of disciplining our people you know enough, and will know more; but they will always fight, which may console for other defects. The want of an organized commissary you will feel of a surety, but less than with regulars, who do not know as do our people how to diet their English bellies, or how to forage at need on wood and river. Prepare, too, for desertion and drunkenness, which is the curse of the land. But I must forbear, lest I discourage you, although that I consider not to be easy. I would that you smoked a pipe. It confers great equanimity in times of doubt, and the Indians hold it to be helpful in council; for while a man smokes he cannot discourse, and thus must needs obtain time for sober reflection, for which reason it would be well that women took to the pipe, a custom which would greatly conduce to comfort in the condition of armed neutrality known as the married state. Charles Sedley once said in my company that the pipe was the bachelor’s hearth, and I have found it a good one. Indeed, my dear George, when I reflect upon the many statues of worthless kings and the monuments to scoundrels in graveyards where the dead lie and the living lie about them, I am inclined to set up a fine memorial at Greenway Court to the unknown Indian who invented this blessing of the Pipe. He must have been a great genius. Wishing you the best of luck, and that I were young enough to be with you, I am, Yours, _Fairfax_. P. S. You will at some time have to serve with regulars or with colonial officers appointed by the crown. Your sense of justice and of what is due to a gentleman will, I am assured, revolt at the want of parity in pay and at other claims to outrank gentlemen of the colonies serving in the militia. As to this I counsel moderation and endurance. Your first duty must be to the crown. _F._