lick-houses were obliged by this law to supply soldiers quartered
upon them with diet and small beer, and hay and straw for their horses,
at such rates as are mentioned in the act; nor can I discover that these
clauses admit of any other interpretation, or that any other could be
intended by the senate by which it was enacted. The pay of the soldiers,
sir, was well known to those who gave their consent to this law, it was
intended by them that the soldiers should be supplied with necessaries,
and it could not be meant that they should pay for them more than they
received; they, therefore, established the rate at which they were to be
furnished, and fixed the highest rate which the wages of a soldier allow
him to pay.

This interpretation was, as I suppose, from its apparent consonance to
reason, universally allowed, till the inhabitants of Ledbury, whither
soldiers had been sent to suppress a riot and enforce the laws, found
their apprehensions so sharpened by their malice, that they discovered
in the act an ambiguity, which had, till that time, escaped the
penetration of the most sagacious, and, upon comparison of one
circumstance with another, found themselves under no obligation to give
any assistance to the soldiers.

They therefore, sir, not only refused to afford them victuals at the
accustomed rates, but proceeding from one latitude of interpretation to
another, at length denied them not only the privilege of diet, but the
use of kitchen utensils, to dress the provisions which they bought for
themselves, and at last denied their claim to the fire itself.

The soldiers, exasperated not only at the breach of their established
and uncontested privileges, but at the privation of the necessaries of
life, began to think of methods more speedy and efficacious than those
of arguments and remonstrances, and to form resolutions of procuring by
force, what, in their opinions, was only by force withheld from them.

What might have been the event of this controversy, to what extremities
a contest about things so necessary might have been carried, how wide
the contest might have spread, or how long it might have lasted, we may
imagine, but cannot determine; had not a speedy decision been procured,
its consequences might have been fatal to multitudes, and a great part
of the nation been thrown into confusion.

Having received an account of the affair from the officers who commanded
at that place, I consulted the attorney-ge