citizen of Virginia, I cannot help
hoping and confiding, that our supreme Executive, whose acts will be
considered as the acts of the Commonwealth, estimate that honor too
highly to make its infraction their own act. I may be permitted to hope,
then, that if any removal takes place, it will be a general one: and, as
it is said to be left to the Governor and Council to determine on
this, I am satisfied, that, suppressing every other consideration, and
weighing the matter dispassionately, they will determine upon this sole
question, Is it for the benefit of those for whom they act, that, the
Convention troops should be removed from among them? Under the head of
interest, these circumstances, viz. the expense of building barracks,
said to have been L25,000, and of removing the troops backwards and
forwards, amounting to I know not how much, are not to be pre-termitted,
merely because they are Continental expenses; for we are a part of the
Continent; we must pay a shilling of every dollar wasted. But the sums
of money, which, by these troops, or on their account, are brought into,
and expended in this State, are a great and local advantage. This can
require no proof. If, at the conclusion of the war, for instance, our
share of the Continental debt should be twenty millions of dollars, or
say that we are called on to furnish an annual quota of two millions
four hundred thousand dollars, to Congress, to be raised by tax, it is
obvious that we should raise these given sums with greater or less
ease, in proportion to the greater or less quantity of money found in
circulation among us. I expect that our circulating money is, by the
presence of these troops, at the rate of $30,000 a week, at the least. I
have heard, indeed, that an objection arises to their being kept within
this state, from the information of the commissary that they cannot
be subsisted here. In attending to the information of that officer,
it should be borne in mind that the county of King William and its
vicinities are one thing, the territory of Virginia another. If the
troops could be fed upon long letters, I believe the gentleman at the
head of that department in this country would be the best commissary
upon earth. But till I see him determined to act, not to write; to
sacrifice his domestic ease to the duties of his appointment, and apply
to the resources of this country, wheresoever they are to be had, I must
entertain a different opinion of him. I am mis