the express understanding that the localities by which they were furnished would receive the proper credit for the excess of their service over one-year's men.

The equity of the rules was so manifest that no objection was urged from any quarter, and up to the receipt of His Excellency's communication there was no apprehension of complaint.

To refuse the credits which the other States are entitled to in order to lessen the present quota of Pennsylvania, which furnished mostly one-year's men, under the call of July 18, 1864, and whose terms of service will have nearly or quite expired before the men required under the present call can be put in the field, would be a violation of law and a disregard of the contract made with the people to which the State of Pennsylvania as represented by His Excellency gave at least their consent, if not their direct approval, and would render the raising of troops under existing or any other laws exceedingly difficult if not impossible.

By this method of estimating credits the Army has been re- enforced with 117,000 three-years" troops. The losses sustained by these troops during the first year are amply compensated by the efficiency acquired by experience and discipline no fact being better established than that a three-years" regiment is worth more to the service at the beginning of the second year than it was at the time it entered the service with a full complement of men.

Again, if His Excellency's present plan, of making no distinction between a one and three years" man in the amount of credit due in localities furnishing them, had been adopted, these troops (117,000) would have been enlisted for one year, and it would have been necessary to anticipate the expiration of their term of service, and commence now to supply their places by new men; the present call would have been increased from 300,000 to 417,000, and the number of men required from the State of Pennsylvania would be greater than the quota assigned under the present call.

The plan His Excellency proposes, to adjust claims for credits on account of the "periods of service" of men enlisted prior to February 24 (at which time he claims that the law requiring the periods of service to be considered at all was repealed), is to assume that a given number of men are lost at the end of each year; that is to say, he assumes that a certain amount of actual service is rendered, and proposes to make up the deficiency by new men assessed pro rata upon the different localities, to take the place of the troops killed or discharged on account of disability.

He asserts that of 1,000 men enter the service for three years 600 are lost, upon an average, at the end of the first year and 200 at the end of the second year, &c., and then proceeds to show that a town which has furnished one-year's men is called upon to furnish a much lange number of men than one which has filled its quota with three-years" men.

This assumption is neither reasonable nor in accordance with the statistics of the Army, as appears from the records of the War Department, nor are the conclusions based upon it correct. The regiments from the State of Pennsylvania which entered service for nine months left the service on the expiration of their terms of enlistment with a loss of less than 16 per cent. Taking this as an instance, it would be safe to assume that if they had remained twelve months in service the loss would have been 20 per cent. A town, therefore, which furnished