gentlemen who have posts in the
army, to behave themselves in such a manner as might encourage the
legislature to make some provision for them, when there will be no
further need of their services. They are to consider themselves as
persons by their educations unqualified for many other stations of life.
Their fortunes will not suffer them to retain to a party after its fall,
nor have they weight or abilities to help towards its resurrection. Their
future dependence is wholly upon the prince and Parliament, to which they
will never make their way, by solemn execrations of the ministry; a
ministry of the Qu[een]'s own election, and fully answering the wishes of
her people. This unhappy step in some of their brethren, may pass for an
uncontrollable argument, that politics are not their business or their
element. The fortune of war hath raised several persons up to swelling
titles, and great commands over numbers of men, which they are too apt to
transfer along with them into civil life, and appear in all companies as
if it were at the head of their regiments, with a sort of deportment
that ought to have been dropt behind, in that short passage to Harwich.
It puts me in mind of a dialogue in Lucian,[11] where Charon wafting one
of their predecessors over Styx, ordered him to strip off his armour and
fine clothes, yet still thought him too heavy; "But" (said he) "put off
likewise that pride and presumption, those high-swelling words, and that
vain-glory;" because they were of no use on the other side the water.
Thus if all that array of military grandeur were confined to the proper
scene, it would be much more for the interest of the owners, and less
offensive to their fellow subjects.[12]

[Footnote: 1: No. 20 in the reprint. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 2: Ovid, "Metamorphoses," xiii. 353:

"Well assured, that art
And conduct were of war the better part."
J. DRYDEN.
[T.S.]]

[Footnote 3: A.D. 1093. See Matthew Paris. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 4: Lord Campbell, in his "Lives of the Chancellors" (vol. iv.,
p. 322), states that Marlborough, in order to increase the confidence of
the allies, proposed "he should receive a patent as commander-in-chief
for life." On consulting with Lord Chancellor Cowper he was told
that such a proceeding would be unconstitutional. Marlborough, however,
petitioned the Queen, who rejected his application. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 5: Aemilius Paulus, the celebrated Roman general, and con