"This might," he said, "be termed an application for powers too dangerous to be trusted." He could only answer, "that desperate diseases required desperate remedies.

He could with truth declare that he felt no lust for power, but wished with as much fervency as any man upon this wide extended continent, for an opportunity of turning the sword into a ploughshare; but his feelings as an officer and a man had been such as to force him to say, that no person ever had a greater choice of difficulties to contend with than himself." After recapitulating the measures he had adopted, which were not within his power, and urging many other necessary arrangements, he added, "it may be thought I am going a good deal out of the line of my duty to adopt these measures, or to advise thus freely.

A character to lose; an estate to forfeit; the inestimable blessing of liberty at stake; and a life devoted, must be my excuse." The present aspect of American affairs was gloomy in the extreme.

The existing army, except a few regiments, affording an effective force of about fifteen hundred men, would dissolve in a few days.

New Jersey had, in a great measure, submitted; and the militia of Pennsylvania had not displayed the alacrity expected from them.