design; and if in any other objections which I shall
make, I shall fall into any errour of the same kind, I desire that it
may be ascribed to the same cause.

The ignorance and inexperience of our present officers have been exposed
with great gaiety of imagination, and with the true spirit of satirical
rhetorick, nor can I presume to support them against so formidable
censures. But, my lords, I cannot discover any method of protracting the
lives of our old officers beyond the usual term, nor of supplying the
loss of those whom death takes away from the army, but by substituting
others, who, as they have seen no wars, can have little experience.

With regard to the number of officers in the foreign troops, I have been
informed, that they were, by an express stipulation, to be constituted
in the same manner with the British and Dutch forces.

Then the duke of ARGYLE again interrupted him:--My lords, as it was my
province in the late war to superintend the payment of the foreign
troops, I may be allowed to have some knowledge of the establishment,
and hope I shall not be imagined to need any information on that
subject.

Lord CHOLMONDELEY said:--My lords, I do not presume to dispute any
assertion of the noble duke, for whose knowledge I have the highest
veneration, but only to offer such hints for inquiry as may be pursued
by other lords of greater abilities, and to show, that as some
difficulties may be raised, the resolution ought not to be agreed to
without farther deliberation; since it not only tends to prescribe the
measures which shall be hereafter taken, and prohibit a method of
raising forces, which, when diligently examined, may, perhaps, appear
most eligible, but to censure the methods, which, when they were put in
practice the last year, received the approbation of all the powers of
the legislature.

Lord WESTMORELAND spoke next, as follows:--My lords, I have, for my own
satisfaction, stated the difference of the expense between the two
methods of raising forces, and find it so great, that the method
proposed by the noble duke ought, undoubtedly, to be preferred, even
though it were attended with some inconvenience, from which he has shown
it to be free.

Frugality, my lords, is one of the chief virtues of an administration; a
virtue without which no government can be long supported: the publick
expense can never be too accurately computed, or the first tendency to
profusion too rigorously opposed; for