Upon what principles, sir, any gentleman can form those notions, or with what view he can so long and so studiously disperse them, it is his province to explain; for the only reason that can be offered by any other person for his incessant declamations, the desire of securing his country from the oppression of a standing army, is now for ever overthrown by this new proposal; which, if it were to be received, would in a very few years produce an army proper to be employed in the execution of the most detestable designs, an army that could be of no other use than to gratify an ambitious prince, or a wicked ministry, as it would be commanded, not by men who had lost their liberty, but by men who never enjoyed it, by men who would abolish our constitution without knowing that they were engaged in any criminal undertaking, who have no other sense of the enjoyment of authority than that it is the power of acting without controul, who have no knowledge of any other laws than the commands of their superiours.
To men like these, sir, to men raised up from poverty and servility to rank and power, to ignorance invested with command, and to meanness elated with preferment, would any real patriot, any zealous assertor of liberty, any inflexible enemy to the corruptions of the ministry, consign the protection of his country, and intrust to these our happiness, properties, and our lives?
Whether the honourable gentleman has changed any of the sentiments which he has hitherto appeared to admit with regard to the army, whether this new determination is only an instance of that inconsistency which is scarcely to be avoided in the vindication of a bad cause, or whether he was betrayed to it only by his hatred of the administration, which would prompt him to recant his own advice, if it should happen to be approved, I will not pretend to determine, but I must lament, on this occasion, the entertainment which the house will lose, by the eternal cessation of any harangues on the army, since he cannot now declaim on either part without contradicting his former declarations.
Nor will the honourable gentleman find less difficulty in proving, that justice, rather than policy, requires the promotion of Serjeants to commissions. Military preferments are always at the disposal of the crown, nor can any right be pretended to them, but such as arises from the custom which has been generally followed in conferring them, which is not only variable at pleasure, but has never been, at any time, regularly observed. The order of rotation has been suffered sometimes to proceed, because of two persons, otherwise equal, he that has served longest may plead the most merit; but the plea of service has been always overruled by birth or powerful recommendation. And though, sir, it is natural for men disappointed to complain, yet as those officers, whose preferment has been delayed, were not thought, in reality, to have received any injury, their murmurs have been the less regarded.
It might be expected, sir, from a patriot, a lamenter of the degeneracy of mankind, and an inflexible opponent of corruption, that he should consider rather facts than persons, that he should regulate his decision by the unvariable principles of reason and justice, and that, therefore, he should not applaud at one time what he condemns at another.
But this gentleman seems to have established some new maxims of conduct, and, perhaps, upon new notions of morality; for he seems to imagine, that his friends may seize, as their right, what his adversaries cannot touch without robbery, though the claim of both be the same.
It is well known, sir, to the whole army, that a noble person, whose abilities are so loudly celebrated, whose virtues are so liberally praised, and whose removal from his military employments is so solemnly lamented as a publick calamity, obtained his first preferments by pretensions very different from military merit, and that at the age only of seventeen, a time of life in which, whatever might be his abilities, very little prudence or experience could be expected, he was advanced to the command of a regiment, and exalted above many officers whose known bravery and frequent hazards entitled them to favour.
I do not assert that he was undeservedly promoted, or condemn those who either solicited or granted his commission; I maintain only, that what was then reasonable and just, is not now either iniquitous or ridiculous, and different persons in the same circumstances have a right to the same treatment.
In the reign of queen Anne, a reign, sir, which every Briton recollects with so much satisfaction, and which will for ever afford examples of the wisest councils, and most successful wars, when new regiments were to be raised, it was far from being thought necessary to observe this gentleman's favourite method of rotation; posts were filled, not with the officers of other regiments, that room might be left for the promotion of serjeants, but with gentlemen who had never seen a battle, or learned any part of the military discipline.
But though, sir, the regulation of our army be thus violently attacked, the greatest crime of the ministry is, in this gentleman's opinion, that of levying new troops, when we have no employment for our standing forces, of laying unnecessary impositions upon the nation, and alarming with the fears of an invasion, only that the army might be increased.