In compliance with the request of congress, General Washington submitted his objections to the plan, in a long and respectful letter.

He recommended that legionary corps should be substituted in the place of regiments entirely of cavalry.  He thought it more adviseable that the infantry attached to the cavalry should compose a part of the corps permanently, than that it should be drawn occasionally from the regiments of foot.

The reduction in the number of regiments appeared to him a subject of great delicacy.  The last reduction, he said, had occasioned many to quit the service, independent of those who were discontinued; and had left durable seeds of discontent among those who remained.  The general topic of declamation was, that it was as hard as dishonourable, for men who had made every sacrifice to the service, to be turned out of it, at the pleasure of those in power, without an adequate compensation.  In the maturity to which their uneasiness had now risen from a continuance of misery, they would be still more impatient under an attempt of a similar nature.

It was not, he said, the intention of his remarks to discourage a reform, but to show the necessity of guarding against the ill effects which might otherwise attend it, by making an ample provision both for the officers who should remain in the service, and for those who should be reduced.  This should be the basis of the plan; and without it, the most mischievous consequences were to be apprehended.  He was aware of the difficulty of making a present provision sufficiently ample to give satisfaction; but this only proved the expediency of making one for the future, and brought him to that which he had so frequently recommended as the most economical, the most politic, and the most effectual, that could be devised; this was half pay for life.  Supported by the prospect of a permanent provision, the officers would be tied to the service, and would submit to many momentary privations, and to those inconveniences, which the situation of public affairs rendered unavoidable.  If the objection drawn from the principle that the measure was incompatible with the genius of the government should be thought insurmountable, he would propose a substitute, less eligible in his opinion, but which would answer the purpose.  It was to make the present half pay for seven years, whole pay for the same period.  He also recommended that depreciation on the pay received, should be made up to the officers who should be reduced.

No objection occurred to the measure now recommended, but the expense it would occasion.  In his judgment, whatever would give consistency to the military establishment, would be ultimately favourable to economy.  It was not easy to be conceived, except by those who had witnessed it, what an additional waste and increased consumption of every thing, and consequently what an increase of expense, resulted from laxness of discipline in an army; and where officers thought they did a favour