men can injure our
liberties, and while the posts of the army are bestowed as rewards of
senatorial slavery, gentlemen will always be found who will be corrupted
themselves, and can corrupt a borough; who will purchase a vote in the
house, and sell it for military preferments. By the posts of the army
the senate may be corrupted, and by the corruption of the senate the
army be perpetuated.

Those, my lords, who are the warmest opponents of the army, apprehend
not any danger from their swords, but from their votes. As they have
been of late regulated without discipline or subordination, I should not
feel such anxiety at seeing them led on by their new commanders against
a body of honest ploughmen, united in the cause of virtue and of
liberty; I should, with great alacrity, draw my sword against them, and
should not doubt of seeing them in a short time heaped upon our fields.

But, my lords, they are employed to ruin us by a more slow and silent
method; they are directed to influence their relations in the senate,
and to suborn the voters in our small towns; they are dispersed over the
nation to instil dependence, and being enslaved themselves, willingly
undertake the propagation of slavery.

That the army is instrumental in extending the influence of the ministry
to the senate, cannot be denied, when military preferments are held no
longer than while he that possesses them gives a sanction, by his vote,
to the measures of the court; when no degree of merit is sufficient to
balance a single act of senatorial opposition, and when the nation is
rather to be left to the defence of boys, than the minister be suspected
of misconduct.

Could either bravery or knowledge, reputation, or past services, known
fidelity to his majesty, or the most conspicuous capacity for high
trust, have secured any man in the enjoyment of his post, the noble duke
who made the motion, had carried his command to his grave, nor had the
nation now been deprived either of his arms, or of his counsels.

But, as he has now offered his advice to his country, and supported his
opinion with proofs from reason and experience, which even those who
oppose them have confessed themselves unable to answer; as the justness
of his reasoning, and the extent of his knowledge, have silenced those
whose prejudices will not suffer them to own themselves convinced; let
us not, my lords, reject what we cannot condemn, nor suffer our country
to be defrauded of the adva