Like Shakespeare, as Bishop Blougram has it, he "Saved money, spent it, owned the worth of things." He had no fine and senseless disregard for money or the good things of this world, but on the contrary saw in them not the value attached to them by vulgar minds, but their true worth.

He was a solid, square, evenly-balanced man in those days, believing that whatever he did was worth doing well.

So he farmed, as he fought and governed, better than anybody else.
While thus looking after his own estates at home, he went further afield in search of investments, keeping a shrewd eye on the western lands, and buying wisely and judiciously whenever he had the opportunity.

He also constituted himself now, as in a later time, the champion of the soldiers, for whom he had the truest sympathy and affection, and a large part of the correspondence of this period is devoted to their claims for the lands granted them by the assembly.
He distinguished carefully among them, however, those who were undeserving, and to the major of the regiment, who had been excluded from the public thanks on account of cowardice at the Great Meadows, he wrote as follows: "Your impertinent letter was delivered to me yesterday.

As I am not accustomed to receive such from any man, nor would have taken the same language from you personally without letting you feel some marks of my resentment, I would advise you to be cautious in writing me a second of the same tenor.