has learned them, the
most accurate practice will avail him nothing, and on which he must lose
that time, which might, have been employed in gaining an interest in a
borough, or in forming an alliance with some orator in the senate.

For nothing, my lords, is now considered but senatorial interest, nor is
any subordination desired but in the supreme council of the empire. For
the establishment of this new regulation, the honours of every
profession are prostituted, and every commission is become merely
nominal. To gratify the leaders of the ministerial party, the most
despicable triflers are exalted to an authority, and those whose want of
understanding excludes them from any other employment, are selected for
military commissions.

No sooner have they taken possession of their new command, and gratified
with some act of oppression the wantonness of new authority, but they
desert their charge with the formality of demanding a permission to be
absent, which their commander dares not deny them. Thus, my lords, they
leave the care of the troops, and the study of the rules of war, to
those unhappy men who have no other claim to elevation than knowledge
and bravery, and who, for want of relations in the senate, are condemned
to linger out their lives at their quarters, amuse themselves with
recounting their actions and sufferings in former wars, and with reading
in the papers of every post, the cormissions which are bestowed on those
who never saw a battle.

For this reason, my lords, preferments in the army, instead of being
considered as proofs of merit, are looked on only as badges of
dependence; nor can any thing be inferred from the promotion of an
officer, but that he is in some degree or other allied to some member
of the senate, or the leading voters of a borough.

After this manner, my lords, has the army been modelled, and on these
principles has it subsisted for the last and the present reign; neither
myself, nor any other general officer, have been consulted in the
distribution of commands, or any part of military regulations. Our
armies have known no other power than that of the secretary of war, who
directs all their motions, and fills up every vacancy without
opposition, and without appeal.

But never, my lords, was his power more conspicuous, than in raising the
levies of last year; never was any authority more despotically exerted,
or more tamely submitted to; never did any man more wantonly sport with