I cannot
confute, and to approve without knowledge is no less weak than to
censure.

There is not any present necessity, my lords, of forming a resolution on
this subject; we are not now called upon particularly to consider it,
and certainly it cannot be prudent, by so determinate a decision,
pronounced without reflection or deliberation, to preclude a fuller
examination of this important question.

Lord CARTERET rose, and spoke in this manner:--My lords, the noble duke
who made the present motion has supported it by such strength of
argument, and so fully explained the advantages of the method which it
tends to recommend, that not only the present age, but posterity may,
probably, be indebted to him, for juster notions of a military
establishment, than have been yet attained even by those whose
profession obliges them to such inquiries.

Nor, my lords, could we expect less from his long experience and
extensive capacity; experience gained in the heat of war, and in the
midst of danger; a capacity not only cultivated by solitary
disquisitions in retirement and security, but exercised by difficulties,
and quickened by opposition.

Such abilities, my lords, matured by such an education, have justly made
the noble duke the oracle of war, and procured him the esteem and
reverence of all the powers upon earth.

As I did not receive from my education any military knowledge, I am not
able to add much to the arguments which your lordships have already
heard; but, nevertheless, having been under the necessity of regulating
the army when I had the honour to be employed in Ireland, and having
made, in those countries where I transacted the business of the crown,
some observations upon the different forms of military establishments, I
hope I shall be allowed to offer what my experience or my remarks may
suggest to me, in confirmation of the sentiments of the noble duke.

When I was in Ireland, my lords, the troops of that kingdom consisted of
twenty-one regiments, of which ten were, as last year, brought into
Britain, and the Irish forces were to be filled up by new levies, which
were raised in the manner now proposed, by increasing every regiment
from three hundred and forty to six hundred men; so that the eleven
regiments remaining composed a body of nearly the same number with the
twenty-one regiments, as formerly constituted.

Of the Swedish establishment, my lords, the reputation and success of
their troops are an un