ld all the lazy and voluptuous engage in a state of life
which would qualify them to live upon the labour of others, and to be
profuse without expense?

Our army may, by this method, be increased; but the number of those by
whom they are to be maintained, must quickly diminish: for, by exaction
and oppression, the poorer innkeepers must quickly become bankrupts; and
the soldiers that lose their quarters, must be added to the dividend
allotted to the more wealthy, who, by this additional burden will soon
be reduced to the same state, and then our army must subsist upon their
pay, because they will no longer have it in their power to increase it
by plunder.

It will then be inevitably necessary to divide the army from the rest of
the community, and to build barracks for their reception; an expedient
which, though it may afford present ease to the nation, cannot be put in
practice without danger to our liberties.

The reason, for which so many nations have been enslaved by standing
armies, is nothing more than the difference of a soldier's condition
from that of other men. Soldiers are governed by particular laws, and
subject to particular authority; authority which, in the manner of its
operation, has scarcely any resemblance of the civil power. Thus, they
soon learn to think themselves exempt from all other laws; of which they
either do not discover the use, and, therefore, easily consent to
abolish them; or envy the happiness of those who are protected by them,
and so prevail upon themselves to destroy those privileges which have no
other effect, with regard to them, but to aggravate their own
dependence.

These, sir, are the natural consequences of a military subjection; and
if these consequences are not always speedily produced by it, they must
be retarded by that tenderness which constant intercourse with the rest
of the nation produces, by the exchange of reciprocal acts of kindness,
and by the frequent inculcation of the wickedness of contributing to the
propagation of slavery, and the subversion of the rights of nature;
inculcations which cannot be avoided by men who live in constant
fellowship with their countrymen.

But soldiers, shut up in a barrack, excluded from all conversation with
such as are wiser and honester than themselves, and taught that nothing
is a virtue but implicit obedience to the commands of their officer,
will soon become foreigners in their own country, and march against the
defenders