were told that America could not support her expenditure, and must therefore submit to your arms. The same argument was applied to France. But the calculation was

wrong with respect to both. The Americans and the French were victorious. When a great nation determines to sacrifice wealth and maintain a great principle, there may be danger, there may be such a thing as death, but there cannot be defeat.

The Master of the Rolls differed from the honourable gentleman who spoke last in many points. He could very well understand how the measure might not be profitable in increasing the army, and yet be excessively burthensome to the country. The honourable gentleman appeared to him to have formed a very different idea of what was necessary for an army, than the right honourable gentleman (Mr. Windham) had proposed; for although that right honourable gentleman had talked something about civil privileges, they did not form any part of the plan which had been opened. The examples drawn from the conduct of despotic sovereigns to their armies, would not apply to this country. In despotic states a dash of a pen would remove the inconvenience and the contract: a French sovereign might promise, and then publish an ordonnance to excuse the non-performance; but British promises and acts of parliament were not to be so done away. -On the constitutional part of the question, it would be proper to say, that if the measure were to be carried into effect, it ought to receive its operation from the crown, without any parliamentary interposition. The King, no doubt, had complete authority to limit the service. The present clause was incongruous with the whole tenor of the mutiny bill; that was to augment the powers of his Majesty; but this was to restrict those powers. He was sorry to hear it said, that soldiers were rather to look to the legis lature than to the Sovereign, under the idea of any diffidence in the latter; whatever mistakes might have been committed by particular officers, he believed there had been no breach of any deliberate contract by the executive government. When once limited service was recommended as a great boon sanctioned by parliament, an impression would be produced in favour of it, which it would' be impossible to remove, and the consequence would be, that indefinite service could not be restored, however necessary it might become to the public security. Nothing had

yet

yet been said to shew how this scheme could be accommodated to our colonial establishments, and this made the great distinction in the present case, for Britain had this peculiar object to preserve, which was comparatively of no consequence with those countries where limited service had been adopted. The right honourable gentleman (Mr. Windham) presumed, although the soldiers had a right to be discharged, that they would not avail themselves of such a right. It was too much in the right honourable gentleman to expect, that in the absence of all proof his predictions were to be substituted for facts. A little had been said on the injurious effects of limited service in this country; it was well known, that the independence of America had nearly been sacrificed to this egregious error in the military system of the provinces. The additional force bill, the army of reserve bill, and the mode of recruiting by ballot, had all been abandoned, so that now nothing remained to interfere with the regular army. Why then should not this be tried? He hoped ministers would either withdraw this hazardous and impolitic project, or at least produce it in the committee in a more digested state. If they would do neither of these, he must make use of the rights he had, and give his decided opposition to the

'measure.

The Solicitor General was extremely sorry that his learned friend had said so little of the novel and dangerous docrines advanced in the course of this debate. It was said that this ought not to be a subject of discussion. What was the subject before the committee? It was the mutiny bill; a bill which declared it should be lawful for the King to establish courts martial, and that only for one year; a bill which said, that it was unlawful to quarter troops upon the subject, and restricted this burthen only to one year. In this bill a clause was proposed limiting military service to seven years, and it was to be asserted, that such a clause in such a bill was unconstitutional. But this was not to to be done in a mutiny bill. If it were to be abrogated, how could it more conveniently be introduced than into an annual bill. The right honourable and learned gentleman said, that it was wrong such a measure should be sanctioned by parliament; it would have such a powerful effect upon the public mind: and yet in the same breath the committee was told that the youth who entered into the

service were utterly indifferent if it were limited or indefinite. One moment this was a great boon, which would render limited service in future impossible, the next it was of no value, and one additional man would not be added to the army by the concession. He left gentlemen on the other side of the House to reconcile these glaring inconsistencies. The most extraordinary argument was, that it was dangerous to the constitution to en list soldiers for a limited time, and therefore the scheme ought to be rejected. Did gentlemen remember how jealous the natives of this island had always been of a standing army in the best times of our history? Why was the militia preferred, but because they were engaged for a limited time, and returned again into the mass of citizens? Did not gentlemen remember, that the soldier resigns the Habeas Corpus Act and the trial by jury? He would quote the sentiments of a great and learned Judge, who he believed was indebted for his preferment to the abilities he displayed in the work to which he should now refer. "In a land of liberty it is extremely dangerous to make a distinct order of the profession of arms. In absolute monarchies this is necessary for the safety of the prince, and arises from the main principle of their constitution, which is that of governing by fear: but in free states the profession if a soldier, taken singly and merely as a profession, is justly an object of jealousy. In these no man should take up arms, but with a view to defend his country and its laws: he puts not off the citizen when he enters the camp; but it is because he is a citizen, and would wish to continue so, that he makes himself, for a while, a soldier. The laws therefore, and constitution of these kingdoms, know no such state as that of a perpetual standing soldier, bred up to no other profession than that of war: and it was not until the reign of Henry VII. that the Kings of England had so much as a guard about their persons."-" Nothing then, according to these principles, ought to be more guarded against in a free state, than making the military power, when such a one is necessary to be kept on foot, a body too distinct from the people. Like ours, it should wholly be composed of natural subjects; it ought only to be enlisted for a short and limited time; the soldiers also should live intermixed with the people; no separate camp, no barracks, no inland fortresses should be allowed. And, perhaps, it might be

still better, if by dismissing a stated number, and enlisting others at every renewal of their term, a circulation could be kept up between the army and the people, and the citizen and the soldier be more intimately connected together."What was it that had happened since this luminous author published his Commentaries, that should diminish his jealousies of a standing army? Was it because the standing ariny was three times as numerous? Was it because it had been necessary to establish barracks? Was it because a great military despotism had been expanding itself all over Europe, or because every advancing year the vestiges of liberty were progressively destroyed amongst the surrounding empires? We had no superiority of muscular force, of military discipline, or of knowledge in the art of war, over our opponent: we had nothing to oppose to him which gave us a decided advantage; but the zeal of our soldiery, who were not to fight for a glittering tyrant, but for themselves, for their own liberties, for a cause in which every man must consider, if he fell in the field, that he was a martyr to the freedom of his country. To make him burn with these energetic sentiments of virtue and patriotism, he must feel that he was not only a soldier but a citizen. He (the Solicitor General) could not listen with patience to the cold arithmetic of his hon. and learned friend (Mr. Perceval), who exclaimed with a sort of triumph, that after the soldier had spent 21 years in the service, we had bought all this for sixteen guineas. If he had counted the scars on the breast of the veteran, with the same precision that he reckoned the guineas, the liberality of his nature would have revolted at such a frigid calculation. Then, added he, these ministers had economy on their lips, but none in their hearts. The economy for which he contended could indeed. find no place in the heart. Whether he looked to the principles of the British constitution; whether he attended to the voice of reason, justice, and huma nity; whether he regarded the maxims of political wisdom, recognized in past times; on whatever side he cou templated this measure, new motives were presented, to give it his cordial support.

General Norton spoke against the clause, and suggested an amendment, that troops in the whole islands should be attested to serve not only during the term of seven years, but until six months after the termination of any war in which

1

which their time should expire; troops in the Mediterranean and West Indies to serve for twelve months, and in the East Indies for eighteen months after the termination of such war.

Colonel Craufurd shewed the fallacy of Lord Castlereagh's statement of the expence of the measure, by noticing that his lordship had on the one hand taken the army as it now stood, thereby giving no credit to the plan for raising recruits, while on the other he had, in estimating the additional expence, calculated it at 250,000 instead of 120,000 men, thereby making a difference in their statements of 1,001,000l. the noble lord's being 1,638,0007. while, according to his (colonel Craufurd's) calculation, it ouly amounted to 670,000l.

Sir William Lemon congratulated the House on having heard the most constitutional speech from the solicitor-general, which in the course of thirty or forty years he had ever heard in that House. The greatest grievance which could attend a free country, was a great standing army. If such must be maintained, the most constitutional way in which it could be established the better. On that ground he approved of the speech of the solicitor-general.

Lord Louvaine asked, if the present army in this country was not a constitutional one?

Lord De Blaquiere supported the clause. If gentlemen who opposed the measure thought it of the supreme importance they pretended, why did they object to its being agitated in parliament, rather than that it should emanate, as he agreed it might, from the authority of his Majesty?

General Stewart, notwithstanding the arguments which had been offered by several learned gentlemen, and by an honourable Irish orator (Mr. Grattan), who spoke early in the debate, could not agree in the good consequences that were anticipated from this plan. It was said, it would not only procure a rapid supply of men, but those of a better description. He did not conceive the army could have a better description than that of soldiers, and as to better orders of men, he thought the common day-labourers made better soldiers than tradesmen or clerks; he spoke from the experience of ten years as a commanding officer; and he could not coincide in the opinion of the honourable Irish orator.

Mr.