at when I reflect upon it,
I cannot easily conceive by what art it can be made the subject of long
harangues, or how the most fruitful imagination can expatiate upon it.

It is already admitted that an army is necessary; the pay of that army
is already established; the accidental scarcity of forage and victuals
is such, that the pay is not sufficient to maintain them; how then must
the deficiency be supplied? It has been proposed, either to fix the
price of provisions with respect to them, or to advance their wages in
some proportion to the price of provisions. Both these methods seem to
meet with disapprobation, and yet the army is to be supported.

Those who reason thus, do surely not expect to be answered, or at least
expect from a reply no other satisfaction than that of seeing the time
of the session wasted, and the administration harassed with trivial
delays; for what can be urged with any hope of success to him who will
openly deny contradictory propositions, who will neither move nor stand
still, who will neither disband an army nor support it?

Whether these gentlemen conceive that an army may subsist without
victuals till the time of scarcity is over, or whether they have raised
those forces only to starve them, I am not sagacious enough to
conjecture, but shall venture to observe, that if they have such a
confidence in the moderation and regularity of the soldiers, as to
imagine that they will starve with weapons in their hands, that they
will live within the sight of full tables, and languish with hunger, and
perish for want of necessaries, rather than diminish the superfluities
of others, they ought for ever to cease their outcries about the
licentiousness, insolence, and danger of a standing army.

But, not to sink into levity unworthy of this assembly, may I be
permitted to hint that these arts of protracting our debates, are by no
means consistent with the reasons for which we are assembled, and that
it is a much better proof, both of ability and integrity, to remove
objections, than to raise them, and to facilitate, than to retard, the
business of the publick.

The proposal made at first was only to elucidate a law which had been
regularly observed for fifty years, and to remove such ambiguities as
tended only to embarrass the innholders, not to relieve them.

To this many objections have been made, and much declamation has been
employed to display the hardships of maintaining soldiers, but no bett