Our army may, by this method, be increased; but the number of those by whom they are to be maintained, must quickly diminish: for, by exaction and oppression, the poorer innkeepers must quickly become bankrupts; and the soldiers that lose their quarters, must be added to the dividend allotted to the more wealthy, who, by this additional burden will soon be reduced to the same state, and then our army must subsist upon their pay, because they will no longer have it in their power to increase it by plunder.
It will then be inevitably necessary to divide the army from the rest of the community, and to build barracks for their reception; an expedient which, though it may afford present ease to the nation, cannot be put in practice without danger to our liberties.
The reason, for which so many nations have been enslaved by standing armies, is nothing more than the difference of a soldier's condition from that of other men. Soldiers are governed by particular laws, and subject to particular authority; authority which, in the manner of its operation, has scarcely any resemblance of the civil power. Thus, they soon learn to think themselves exempt from all other laws; of which they either do not discover the use, and, therefore, easily consent to abolish them; or envy the happiness of those who are protected by them, and so prevail upon themselves to destroy those privileges which have no other effect, with regard to them, but to aggravate their own dependence.
These, sir, are the natural consequences of a military subjection; and if these consequences are not always speedily produced by it, they must be retarded by that tenderness which constant intercourse with the rest of the nation produces, by the exchange of reciprocal acts of kindness, and by the frequent inculcation of the wickedness of contributing to the propagation of slavery, and the subversion of the rights of nature; inculcations which cannot be avoided by men who live in constant fellowship with their countrymen.
But soldiers, shut up in a barrack, excluded from all conversation with such as are wiser and honester than themselves, and taught that nothing is a virtue but implicit obedience to the commands of their officer, will soon become foreigners in their own country, and march against the defenders of their constitution, with the same alacrity as against an army of invaders ravaging the coasts; they will lose all sense of social duty, and of social happiness, and think nothing illustrious but to enslave and destroy.
So fatal, sir, will be the effects of an establishment of barracks, or petty garrisons, in this kingdom; and, therefore, as barracks must be built when innkeepers are ruined, and our concurrence with this proposal must produce their ruin, I hope it-will not be necessary to prove by any other argument, that the motion ought to be rejected.
Mr. PELHAM spoke next, in terms to this purpose:—Sir, though I am not inclined, by loud exaggerations and affected expressions of tenderness, to depress the courage or inflame the suspicions of the people, to teach them to complain of miseries which they do not feel, or ward against ill designs, which were never formed, yet no man is more really solicitous for their happiness, or more desirous of removing every real cause of fear and occasion of hardships.
This affection to the people, an affection steady, regular, and unshaken, has always prompted me to prefer their real to their seeming interest, and rather to consult the security of their privileges than the gratification of their passions; it has hitherto determined me to vote for such a body of troops, as may defend us against sudden inroads and wanton insults, and now incites me to propose that some efficacious method may be struck out for their support, without exasperating either the soldiers or their landlords by perpetual wrangles, or adding to the burden of a military establishment the necessity of contentions in courts of law.
I know not with what view those have spoken, by whom the proposal first made has been opposed; they have, indeed, produced objections, some of which are such as may be easily removed, and others such as arise from the nature of things, and ought not, therefore, to be mentioned, because they have no other tendency than to inflame the minds of those that hear them against an army, at a time when it is allowed to be necessary, and prove only what was never denied, that no human measures are absolutely perfect, and that it is often impossible to avoid a greater evil, but by suffering a less.
The question before us, sir, is in its own nature so simple, so little connected with circumstances that may distract our attention, or induce different men to different considerations, that when I reflect upon it, I cannot easily conceive by what art it can be made the subject of long harangues, or how the most fruitful imagination can expatiate upon it.