The writings of George Washington; being his correspondence, addresses, messages, and other papers, official and private, selected and published from the original manuscripts; with a life of the author, notes and illustrations. By Jared Sparks.

224 WASHINGTON'S WRITINGS. [.AET. 24.
vision made for quartering or billeting soldiers, impressing wagons, and the like.
But that which contributed the most towards rendering this law inconvenient and absurd, and at the same
time to demonstrate that the Assembly fully intended to
prevent any enterprise of their troops out of the colony,
was a clause forbidding any courts-martial to sit out of
it; by which means all proceedings held at Fort Cumberland (in Maryland) were illegal, and we were obliged
to remove to Virginia for the trial of offenders, or act
contrary to law, and be open to prosecution.* How
then were we to behave upon a march of perhaps fifty,
eighty, or a hundred miles beyond? These circumstances concurring to render the law ineffectual, induced me again to recommend an amendment, which
I did with all the'force and energy of argument I was
master of. But no regard has hitherto been paid to my
remonstrances. To what cause it is owing, I know not,
unless to short sittings and hurry of business; for I can
conceive of no reason, why the Assembly should be
A On the 12th of January Colonel Washington wrote to the Governor
respecting the trial of several subaltern officers and soldiers for a mutiny.
"'I thought it needless," said he, "to send you the proceedings of the
court-martial, or to ask warrants for execution, as we have no law to inflict
punishment, even of the smallest kind. I shall keep those criminals in
irons, and, if possible, under apprehensions of death, until some favorable
opportunity may countenance a reprieve." The Governor replied, that, as
the men were enlisted and paid with money raised for the King's service,
he conceived they were subject to the articles of war, in the same manner
as the King's regular forces. But so tenacious was Colonel Washington in
upholding the rights of the Assembly and the laws of the colony, that he did
not accede to this opinion. He considered the Assembly as the only proper
authority to prescribe rules of discipline for'an army, raised and maintained at their expense; and he believed himself amenable to the civil laws
for any acts of severity not countenanced by that code. This was conformable to the scrupulous exactness with'which, during all his future military career, and frequently when the interest of the public service offered
the strongest temptations to the contrary, he yielded implicit obedience to
the civil power.