University of Virginia Library

523. ARMY, Regulation of.—[continued].

To supply the want of
men, nothing more wise or efficient could
have been imagined than what you proposed.
It would have filled our ranks with regulars,
and that, too, by throwing a just share of the
burthen on the purses of those whose persons
are exempt either by age or office; and
it would have rendered our militia, like those
of the Greeks and Romans, a nation of warriors.—
To James Monroe. Washington ed. vi, 408. Ford ed., ix, 497.
(M. Jan. 1815)