provisions, and are likely to continue so.  We have no magazines, nor money to form them.  We have lived upon expedients until we can live no longer.  In a word, the history of the war is a history of false hopes and temporary devices, instead of system and economy.  It is in vain, however, to look back, nor is it our business to do so.  Our case is not desperate, if virtue exists in the people, and there is wisdom among our rulers.  But to suppose that this great revolution can be accomplished by a temporary army; that this army will be subsisted by state supplies; and that taxation alone is adequate to our wants, is in my opinion absurd, and as unreasonable as to expect an inversion of the order of nature to accommodate itself to our views.  If it were necessary, it could be easily proved to any person of a moderate understanding, that an annual army, or any army raised on the spur of the occasion, besides being unqualified for the end designed, is, in various ways that could be enumerated, ten times more expensive than a permanent body of men under good organization and military discipline; which never was, nor will be the case with raw troops.  A thousand arguments, resulting from experience and the nature of things, might also be adduced to prove that the army, if it is to depend upon state supplies, must disband or starve, and that taxation alone (especially at this late hour) can not furnish the means to carry on the war.  Is it not time to retract from error, and benefit by experience?  Or do we want farther proof of the ruinous system we have pertinaciously adhered to.”

CHAPTER VIII.

Treason and escape of Arnold....  Trial and execution of Major Andre....  Precautions for the security of West Point....  Letter of General Washington on American affairs....  Proceedings of congress respecting the army....  Major Talmadge destroys the British stores at Coram....  The army retires into winter quarters....  Irruption of Major Carlton into New York....  European transactions.

[Sidenote:  1780.]

While the public mind was anticipating great events from the combined arms of France and America, treason lay concealed in the American camp, and was plotting the ruin of the American cause.

The great services and military talents of General Arnold, his courage in battle, and patient fortitude under excessive hardships, had secured to him a high place in the opinion of the army and of his country.

Not having sufficiently recovered from the wounds received before Quebec and at Saratoga to be fit for active service, and having large accounts to settle with the government which required leisure, he was, on the evacuation of Philadelphia in 1778, appointed to the command in that place.