lowest,
that has been refused to the most exalted of mankind, or invest our
soldiers with power, which neither the most warlike of our monarchs
could constrain us, nor the most popular allure us to grant.

The power now proposed to be granted, is nothing less than the power of
levying money, or what is exactly equivalent, the power of raising the
money in their own hands, to any imaginary value. A soldier may, if this
motion be complied with, demand for a penny, what another man must
purchase at forty times that price. While this is the state of our
property, it is surely not very necessary to raise armies for the
defence of it; for why should we preserve it from one enemy only to
throw it into the hands of another, equally rapacious, equally
merciless, and only distinguished from foreign invaders by this
circumstance, that he received from our own hands the authority by which
he plunders us.

Having thus evinced the necessity of determining the soldier's
privileges, and the innkeeper's rights, I think it necessary to
recommend to this assembly an uncommon degree of attention to the
regulation of our military establishment, which is become not only more
burdensome to our fellow-subjects by the present famine, but by the
increase of our forces; an increase which the nation will not behold
without impatience, unless they be enabled to discern for what end they
have been raised.

The people of this nation are, for very just reasons, displeased, even
with the appearance of a standing army, and surely it is not prudent to
exasperate them, by augmenting the troops in a year of famine, and
giving them, at the same time, new powers of extortion and oppression.

Mr. WINNINGTON spoke to this purpose:--Sir, I have heard nothing in this
debate, but doubts and objections, which afford no real information, nor
tend to the alleviation of those grievances, which are so loudly
lamented.

It is not sufficient to point out inconveniencies, or to give striking
representations of the hardships to which the people are exposed; for
unless some better expedient can be proposed, or some method discovered
by which we may receive the benefits, without suffering the
disadvantages of the present practice, how does it appear that these
hardships, however severe, are not inseparable from our present
condition, and such as can only be removed by exposing ourselves to more
formidable evils?

As no remedy, sir, has been proposed by those who app