es as fighting without that
certainty of success which arises from experience, and their enemies
will resolve to try, by an obstinate resistance, whether they are now
equally formidable as in their former state.

Thus, my lords, I have attempted, however weakly, to represent the
arguments which I have heard for the continuance of the establishment,
of which your lordships will examine the validity, and shall now proceed
to consider the noble duke's system of a military subordination in time
of peace.

Whether a standing army in time of peace is made necessary to the change
of conduct in foreign courts, it is now useless to inquire; but it will
be easily granted by your lordships, that no motive but necessity,
necessity absolute and inevitable, ought to influence us to support a
standing body of regular forces, which have always been accounted
dangerous, and generally found destructive to a free people.

The chief reason, my lords, of the danger arising from a standing army,
may be ascribed to the circumstances by which men, subject to military
laws, are distinguished from other members of the same community; they
are, by the nature of martial government, exposed to punishment which
other men never incur, and tried by forms of a different and more
rigorous kind than those which are practised by the civil power. They
are, if not exempted from the jurisdiction of a magistrate, yet subject
to another authority which they see more frequently and more severely
exerted, and which, therefore, they fear and reverence in a higher
degree. They, by entering into the army, lay aside, for the most part,
all prospect of advantage from commerce or civil employments, and, in a
few years, neither fear nor hope any thing but from the favour or
displeasure of their own officers.

For these, my lords, or for other reasons, the soldiers have always been
inclined to consider themselves as a body distinct from the rest of the
community, and independent on it, a government regulated by their own
laws, without regard to the general constitution of their country; they
have, therefore, been ready to subvert the constitution, from which they
received little advantage, and to oppress the civil magistrates, for
whom they had lost their reverence.

And how soon, my lords, might such outrages be expected from an army
formed after the model of the noble duke, released from the common
obligations of society, disunited from the bulk of the nation, di