The SPEAKER. Is there any further objection to the joint resolution ?

Mr. DINGLEY. I move to modify my amendment so as to insert, after the word "bills," the words "or liabilities incurred."

Mr. SPRINGER. I hope that modification will be adopted and no objection made to the joint resolution, on the understanding we are to have no deficiencies for whisky or anything else. [Laughter.] The amendment as modified was agreed to.

Mr. BEACH. The centennial ceremonies to be held next year at Newburgh, on the Hudson, are intended to commemorate, among other things, an event in the life of George Washington which in my opinion is more noteworthy than any other in the long career of this most illustrious man. The event to which I allude occurred at the close of the war. The Army, after the victory at Yorktown, had been withdrawn to the vicinity of Newburgh, where it went into camp. Disaffection, almost amounting to mutiny, existed not only among the men, but among the officers. Their pay was in arrears, and they had become impressed with the conviction that upon the declaration of peace they would be turned adrift on the world in a penniless condition and with no provision for their future support. Eight years of military service had rendered them unfit for the pursuits of civil life.

That I may not be charged with exaggeration, let me quote from a letter written by Washington to the Secretary of War, dated October 2, 1782:

When I see, he writes, such a number of men, goaded by a thousand stings of reflection on the past and of anticipation on the future, about to be turned into the world, soured by penury and what they call the ingratitude of the public, involved in debts, without one farthing of money to carry them home, after having spent the flower of their days and many of them their patrimonies in establishing the freedom and independence of their country, and suffered everything that human nature is capable of enduring on this side of death—I repeat it, that when I consider these irritating circumstances, without one thing to soothe their feelings or dispel the gloomy prospects, I can not avoid apprehending that a train of evils will follow of a very serious and distressing nature.

I wish not to heighten the shades of the picture so far as the reality would justify me in doing it. I could give anecdotes of patriotism and distress which have scarcely ever been paralleled, never surpassed, in the history of mankind. But, you may rely upon it, the patience and long-suffering of this Army are almost ex