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that the character which will be handed to future ages at the head of our Revolution, may, in no instance, be compromised in sub ordinate altercations. The subject has been at the point of my pen in every letter I have written to you, but has been still re strained by the reflection that you had among your friends more able counsellors, and, in yourself, one abler than them all. Your letter has now rendered a duty what was before a desire, and I cannot better merit your confidence than by a full and free com munication of facts and sentiments, as far as they have come with in my observation. When the army was about to be disbanded, and the officers to take final leave, perhaps never again to meet, it was natural for men who had accompanied each other through so many scenes of hardship, of difficulty and danger, who, in a variety of instances, must have been rendered mutually dear by those aids and good offices, to which their situations had given oc casion, it was natural, I say, for these to seize with fondness any proposition which promised to bring them together again, at cer tain and regular periods. And this, I take for granted, was the origin and object of this institution : and I have no suspicion that they foresaw, much less intended, those mischiefs which exist, perhaps in the forebodings of politicians only. I doubt, however, whether in its execution, it would be found to answer the wishes of those who framed it, and to foster those friendships it was in tended to preserve. The members would be brought together at their annual assemblies, no longer to encounter a common enemy, but to encounter one another in debate and sentiment. For some thing, I suppose, is to be done at these meetings, and, however un important, it will suffice to produce difference of opinion, contra diction and irritation. The way to make friends quarrel is to put them in disputation under the public eye. An experience of near twenty years has taught me, that few friendships stand this test, and that public assemblies, where every one is free to act and speak, are the most powerful looseners of the bands of private friendship. I think, therefore, that this institution would fail in its principal object, the perpetuation of the personal friendships con tracted through the war.
The objections of those who are opposed to the institution shall be briefly sketched. You will readily fill them up. They urge that it is against the Confederation against the letter of some of our constitutions against the spirit of all of them ; that the foun dation on which all these are built, is the natural equality of man, the denial of every pre-eminence but that annexed to legal office, and, particularly, the denial of a pre-eminence by birth ; that, however, in their present dispositions, citizens might decline ac-
