event
oppression on the other, to stop dissensions in their beginning, and
reconcile all the different pretensions of Britons and soldiers.

I am, indeed, surprised, sir, to hear the promotion of serjeants
recommended by the honourable gentleman who has so often strained his
lungs, and exhausted his invention, to explain how much our constitution
is endangered by the army, how readily those men will concur in the
abolition of property who have nothing to lose, and how easily they may
be persuaded to destroy the liberties of their country, who are already
cut off from the enjoyment of them, who, therefore, can only behold with
envy and malevolence those advantages which they cannot hope to possess,
and which produce in them no other effects than a quicker sense of their
own misery.

Upon what principles, sir, any gentleman can form those notions, or with
what view he can so long and so studiously disperse them, it is his
province to explain; for the only reason that can be offered by any
other person for his incessant declamations, the desire of securing his
country from the oppression of a standing army, is now for ever
overthrown by this new proposal; which, if it were to be received, would
in a very few years produce an army proper to be employed in the
execution of the most detestable designs, an army that could be of no
other use than to gratify an ambitious prince, or a wicked ministry, as
it would be commanded, not by men who had lost their liberty, but by men
who never enjoyed it, by men who would abolish our constitution without
knowing that they were engaged in any criminal undertaking, who have no
other sense of the enjoyment of authority than that it is the power of
acting without controul, who have no knowledge of any other laws than
the commands of their superiours.

To men like these, sir, to men raised up from poverty and servility to
rank and power, to ignorance invested with command, and to meanness
elated with preferment, would any real patriot, any zealous assertor of
liberty, any inflexible enemy to the corruptions of the ministry,
consign the protection of his country, and intrust to these our
happiness, properties, and our lives?

Whether the honourable gentleman has changed any of the sentiments which
he has hitherto appeared to admit with regard to the army, whether this
new determination is only an instance of that inconsistency which is
scarcely to be avoided in the vindication of a bad cau