During this well-nigh desperate condition of his army, and the increasing peril to the Southern Department, he made one more Report of his condition to Congress, and it belongs to this narrative as a signal exhibit of his wisdom and courage, as well as his discernment of the increasing lethargy of sections not in immediate danger from British aggression. It reads as follows: “Certain I am, unless Congress are vested with powers by the separate States competent to the great purposes of the war, or assume them as a matter of right, and they and the States act with more energy than they have done, our cause is lost. We can no longer drudge along in the old way. By ill-timing in the adoption of measures, by delays in the execution of them, or by unwarranted jealousies, we incur enormous expenses and derive no benefit from them. One State will comply with a requisition of Congress; another neglects to do it; a third executes it by halves; and they differ in the manner, the matter, or so much in point of time, that we are always working up hill. While such a system as the present one, or rather, the want of one, prevails, we shall be ever unable to apply our strongest resources to any advantage.... I see one head gradually organizing into thirteen. I see one army branching into thirteen, which instead of looking up to Congress as the supreme controlling power of the United States, are considering themselves dependent upon their respective States.” On the third of April, Washington again wrote in such plain terms of “the mutinous spirit, intense disgust, and absolute desperation of his small, famished, ragged, and depleted command,” that after hot debate, a committee of three was reluctantly sent to advise with him as to measures of relief. That the reader may more fully appreciate the temper of some narrow-minded men of that period, and at so fearful a crisis, the following extract from a letter to the Count de Vergennes is cited. In referring to the simple question of appointing a committee to visit their Commander-in-Chief, this American writes: “It was said that the appointment of a committee would be putting too much power in a few hands, and especially in those of the Commander-in-Chief; that his influence already was too great; that even his virtues afforded motives for alarm; that the enthusiasm of his army, joined to the kind of dictatorship already confided to him, put Congress and the United States at his mercy; that it was not expedient to expose a man of the highest virtues to such temptations.” General Schuyler, then in Congress, John Matthews and Nathaniel Peabody served on this committee, and as the result, Congress resolved to equalize the pay of the army, and make more systematic efforts to recruit and maintain it.