Page:The youth of Washington (1910).djvu/174

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This letter now before me runs as follows:

Greenway Court.

My dear George: Yours received from Alexandria, and thank you for the attention when you were so busily engaged. I am always pleased to be acquainted with anything to your advantage, and was gratified at your being chosen to be of the force. I desire you, however, to understand that your worst enemies will not be the French, or the fickle Indians, but those in the rear.

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