ional
purposes: but if the militia are embodied, and the different regiments
that compose it are marched from the respective counties to which
they belong; if the men are detained for any length of time in actual
service, at a distance from their families, when they might be
employed at home in works of industry, for the support of their natural
dependents; the militia becomes no other than an addition to, or
augmentation of, a standing army, enlisted for the term of three years;
the labour of the men is lost to the community; they contract the idle
habits and dissolute manner of the other troops; their families are left
as incumbrances on the community; and the charge of their subsistence
is, at least, as heavy as that of maintaining an equal number of regular
forces. It would not, we apprehend, be very easy to account for the
government's ordering the regiments of militia to march from their
respective counties, and to do duty for a considerable length of time
at a great distance from their own homes, unless we suppose this measure
was taken to create in the people a disgust to the institution of the
militia, which was an establishment extorted from the secretary by
the voice of the nation. We may add, that some of the inconveniencies
attending a militia will never be totally removed, while the persons
drawn by lot for that service are at liberty to hire substitutes; for it
cannot be supposed that men of substance will incur the danger, fatigue,
and damage of service in person, while they can hire among the lowest
class of people mercenaries of desperate fortune and abandoned morals,
who will greedily seize the opportunity of being paid for renouncing
that labour by which they were before obliged to maintain themselves and
their family connexion: it would, therefore, deserve the consideration
of the legislature, whether the privilege of hiring substitutes should
not be limited to certain classes of men, who are either raised by their
rank in life above the necessity of serving in person, or engaged in
such occupations as cannot be intermitted without prejudice to the
commonwealth. It must be allowed, that the regulation in this new act,
by which the families of substitutes are deprived of any relief from the
parish, will not only diminish the burden of the poor's rates; but also,
by raising the price of mercenaries, oblige a greater number of the
better sort to serve in person. Without all doubt, the fewer substitutes