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of all difficulties; but Public Spirit cannot be sustained without governmental patronage there could not be more pernicious course by the United States than to impute the sins of any man or party and to attach the consequences of them to patriotic yeomen who have served in their cause.

  Those men liable at any time to be called upon to expose their loves for the safety of all, require an annual legislative review of their condition, and every reasonable measure calculated to give them animation & vigor. Quartered as they are at large in every dwelling for domestic security, easily concentrated for war, yet, having a common interest, requiring a common cause for the disturbance of peace, they ought to be, as they are, willing to endure much to it & trouble as a necessary security of the rank they enjoy & the noble privilege they participate. That the militia laws are susceptible of improvement is not to be denied, but it may be said that there has been more fault in the complaint against them that in the system itself.
   There are now more than forty thousand men belonging to the militia divided into five hundred & seventy companies. The arms & stores in the Arsenal amount in value to at least one hundred & fifty thousand dollars, the number of arms having been recently increased by a large supply from the United States. The administration of a department thus important & extensive, while it might be less arduous with some further provision for clinical aid in the office of the Adjutant and Quartermaster General, would still be embarrassed by a difficulty which seriously affects the troops, the omission of a code of rules and regulations, settling questions of rank & a great multiplicity of other objects, agreeably to the mode pursued by the United States. The deficiency can either be supplied through the Legisture or by Executive prerogative. 

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