e of the severest scourges of
providence, has filled the whole land with misery and lamentation; and,
surely, nothing can be more inhuman than to choose out this season of
horrour for new encroachments on their privileges, and new invasions of
the rights of nature, the dominion of their own houses, and the
regulation of their own tables.

The honourable gentleman, sir, has mentioned places where provisions, as
he says, are still to be bought at easy rates. For my part, I am fixed
in no such happy corner of the kingdom; I see nothing but scarcity, and
hear nothing but complaints; and shall, therefore, be very far from
admitting now such methods of supporting the army, as were thought too
burdensome in times of plenty; nor will combine in laying a new tax upon
any class of my countrymen, when they are sinking under an enormous load
of imposts, and in want of the necessaries of life.

Sir William YONGE replied, in the manner following:--Sir, nothing is
more easy than outcry and exaggeration; nor any thing less useful for
the discovery of truth, or the establishment of right. The most
necessary measures may often admit of very florid exclamations against
them, and may furnish very fruitful topicks of invective.

When our liberties, sir, are endangered, or our country invaded, it may
be very easy, when it is proposed that we should have recourse to our
swords for security, to bewail, in pathetick language, the miseries of
war, to describe the desolation of cities, the waste of kingdoms, the
insolence of victory, and the cruelty of power inflamed by hostilities.
Yet to what will those representations contribute, but to make that
difficult which yet cannot be avoided, and embarrass measures which
must, however, be pursued.

Such, sir, appear to me to be the objections made to the methods now
proposed of providing necessaries for the soldiers; methods not eligible
for their own sake, but which ought not to be too loudly condemned, till
some better can be substituted; for why should the publick be alarmed
with groundless apprehensions? or why should we make those laws which
our affairs oblige us to enact, less agreeable to the people by partial
representations?

In the discussion of this question, sir, is to be considered whether
soldiers are to be supported, and whether it will be more proper to
maintain them by the method of ascertaining the rates at which they are
to be supplied, or by increasing their pay.

One of the