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P. Where is the danger of twenty or thirty thou sand superfluous men in arms?

G. They must all be fed and clothed, and paid, they must have arms and ammunition, and all this expence falls on the people. Is not this an injury to property?

P. Do you see any other inconvenience?

G. Men unemployed contract habits of idleness or profligacy, and both are injurious to the morals of a state.

P. Do you think morality of consequence to a state?

G. There is a set of just and proper actions essential to its prosperity, yea, to its existence. There is a set of domestick virtues essential to the peace of a family; a set of trade virtues essential to the prosperity of commerce; there is a set of political virtues essential to the glory of a kingdom; and there is a set of religious virtues essential to the worship of Almighty God. I have been taught

SO.

P. Is an unemployed army remarkable for these virtues?

G. I am sorry to say quite the reverse.

P. To omit the rest, is a standing army friendly to political virtue?

G. How can a standing army befriend political virtue, when a standing army is under the absolute command of one single general, and when submission to orders is the indispensable law of every individual?

P. The connections that make a slave make a tyrant!

G. Forgive me a moment. Old nurse Piper came yesterday to see her child as she calls me. P. Well.

G. I inquired how her son did, and she fell a crying. O exclaimed she, he is ruined, and we are all undone ! He was the kindest creature in the parish before he went into the militia; but now he has lost every good quality, and has brought home nothing but an order, an oath, and a blow.

P. Had the old woman read history, she might have illustrated the doctrine of orders, and oaths, and blows, by the ruin of many a kingdom, if that would have comforted her. However, you distinguish between a militia raised for temporary defence, or a few troops kept in lieu of them for the same purpose, and a standing army.

G. I do; I allow the necessity of the first on a principle of self preservation; I dislike the last for many reasons, and one is because it makes arms a profession.

P. You think it an unlawful profession?

G. I do; for a man to give himself up to learn the art of destroying his fellow creatures, and to let himself out for hire to destroy whomsoever his commander shall doom to destruction, and this without retaining a right to judge of the justice or injustice of the order, and to make a merit of implicit obedience in such a bloody business, argues the soul of a slave, and is never found general,

till a nation has sunk into the lowest degree of political depravity.

P. So much for principles; let us come to facts. "Our constitution knows no such state as that of a perpetual standing soldier, bred up to no other profession than that of war, and it was not till the reign of Henry VII, that the kings of England had so much as a guard about their persons.' These are the words of Judge Blackstone.

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G. What is the present constitutional force for the safety and defence of the kingdom?

P. The militia, consisting of a certain number of the inhabitants of every county chosen by lot for three years, and officered by the Lord Lieutenant of the county, the deputy lieutenants, and the principal landholders, under a commission from the crown.

G. But we have a standing army in time of peace.

P. We have but so jealous have our legislators been, that they are actually disbanded at the expiration of every year, unless continued by parliament.

G. Are all these forces entrusted with the crown?
P. All; and a great and important trust it is.
G. How are they regulated?

P. By an annual act of parliament, called the
Mutiny Bill, an act as inconsistent with the free
constitution of this country as can be conceived.
G. How so.

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P. By this act, a soldier disobeying the lawful commands of his superior officer is doomed to suf

fer such punishment as a court martial shall inflict, though it extend to death itself.

G. Who appoints this court martial ?
P. The crown.

G. And by what law do that court judge.

P. By articles of war formed by his majesty. G. In this case the crown is entrusted with both legislative and executive power absolute ?

P. Exactly so.

G. Is not the military then in a state of servitude, and is not their slavery dangerous to our liberty?

P. I think so.

G. What reconciles our nobility and gentry to this state of subjection to arbitrary power?

P. Perhaps dissipation, which renders the pay necessary. Perhaps ambition, which always runs the road of honour. Perhaps fashion, which seldom consults reason. Perhaps their opinion of the mild character of the

king, who, they trust, will

not make an unkind use of his power.

G. How could armies be governed without severe laws? Were soldiers allowed to examine the orders of their superiors before they executed them, the delay might occasion great damage?

P. Sometime ago your uncle, who loves horses, complained to your mother, that though he kept three fine hunters, yet he could not ride with any pleasure to himself, or with safety to his life and limbs. She did not inquire what made the horses unma

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nageable, for she knew it was owing to little exercise and high keeping; but she asked him why he kept three for his own riding when he rode but little, and never more than one at a time. He took the hint, disposed of two, and now rides safe and easy.

G. Suppose a nation long habituated to keep a standing army, many families interested in the continuance of one, and laws to perpetuate it?

P. I reply in the language of one of the greatest ornaments of this age. "All the nations now in the world, who, in consequence of the tameness and folly of their predecessors, are subject to arbitrary power, have a right to emancipate themselves as soon as they can."

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