best of kings we ought to provide against the worst. I do not say, my Lords, that we are now in any immediate danger of losing our liberties; but I say, that we are getting into that way by which the liberties of every country have been undone ; we are establishing the custom of keeping up a standing army in time of peace; we are every year increasing the number of the officers of the revenue, what will the consequence be? I tremble to think of it! We are not indeed under any danger while his present Majesty lives to reign over us. But will not every succeeding king say, why will you treat me worse than my predecessor? Why will you refuse to grant me that number of regular forces, or that revenue which in some circumstances you granted to my father? And we well know my lords, how complaisant parliament generally are in the beginning of a reign; they are generally more apt to increase both the revenue and the army of the crown than they are to diminish either; and if an ambitious prince should succeed to the crown, supported by such a numerous standing army as what is now proposed, so long kept up as to have formed themselves into a different body from the people to whom they belong, and with such a crowd of officers of the revenue as we have at present, all depending upon him and removable at his pleasure, what may he not do? sition, it is true, was set up much about the same time, and in all countries an inquisition of some kind or another generally accompanies arbitrary power; there may be courts of inquisition with regard to civil affairs as well as religious, and all inquisitions are at first established upon some plausible pretence. The banishing of the Moors and Jews out of his kingdoms, was the pretence made use of by Ferdinand then king of Spain, but the extending of his own power was the latent and the chief reason: The inquisition was not, however, the chief cause of the loss of the Spanish liberties, it was only a consequence, for before the setting up thereof, he had got the absolute cominand of a great army which had been kept up for several years under pretence of their war with Portugal, whose then king laid pretensions to the crown of Spain; and by keeping his country in continual wars, he found pretences to keep up a standing army, with which, it is true, he conquered and banished the Moors, but he therewith likewise conquered the liberties of his country and the chains of the people were soon after riveted by a priest, a cardinal prime minister, who completed the cruel work which Ferdinand by his army had so successfully begun. In France too, my Lords, it was by Standing Armies chiefly that their liberties were undone; it was not, indeed, by armies modelled as they I am surprised, my Lords, to hear it said, that have them at present, but it was by altering standing armies have had no hand in the over- the ancient military force of the kingdom that turning the liberties of the several countries of their liberties were destroyed; it was by their Europe. It is true that the most numerous king's taking the army' à sa Solde,' as they call army can be of no dangerous consequence to it; for anciently the military force of that the liberties of any country, as long as it de-kingdom depended chiefly upon the nobility pends upon a great many heads; an army can never be of dangerous consequence, till it comes to be entirely dependent upon one man, and that it generally does when it is long kept up, more especially if any one man comes to get the whole power into his hands both of paying the army, and of naming and preferring the several officers employed therein. Julius Cæsar had too long a head not to be sensible of this, and therefore he procured himself to be sent into Gaul; there he continued for several years at the head of numerous conquering armies, and having got into his own hands both the power of paying and preferring in his army, he soon managed it so as to make them entirely obedient to him; then he commanded them to march against, and with them he conquered his country. If there had been no standing armies of either side, the consequence could not have been the same, though a civil war haa broke out; the armies newly raised by each side must have had a dependence upon a great many chiefs, and which ever side had got the victory, the chiefs would have taken care of the liberties of their country; they would have settled them upon the ancient foundation, or upon a better, if any better could have been contrived. In Spain it was likewise by such an army that their liberties were destroyed; the inqui or great princes: their armies were composed they were then exposed to, they could not be induced to keep up a standing army; they never had any thing but militia, or troops raised as occasion required, and with these they at last banished the English quite out of their kingdom. But as soon as the kings of France got thus free of an enemy within the bowels of their kingdom, they thereafter took occasion of every foreign war that happened to encroach a little further upon the liberties of their subjects, to multiply taxes and tax-gatherers upon them, and to get the armies of the kingdom more and more under their command: in all which they succeeded beyond expectation, by a most stupid indolence that then reigned among the nobilityof France, and yet that nation still retained some remains of liberty, till a priest, cardinal Richlieu by name, gave their liberties the last stab. He indeed was a great minister, and a great politician, though he oppressed the subject at home, yet he not only supported but raised the grandeur of the nation abroad; he committed no blunders in his administration, nor did he submit to any foreign power in the treaties or negotiations he had with them; and we may remember that in his Political Testament, he left it as a maxim, that the King ought never to part with any tax he has once got estalished, even though he has no use for the money; because by giving up the tax he loses the officers that are employed in the collecting thereof. This great prime minister was succeeded by another priest, a foreign priest, who had all his bad qualities but none of his good; so that by his misconduct France was soon involved in a civil war, and it is said that one of the greatest men of France at that time, and one of the greatest generals of the age he lived in, told the Queen Regent, that she had a fellow at the head of her affairs who for his crimes deserved to be tugging at the oar in one of her gallies. But the arbitrary power of the king of France had by his predecessor been so firmly established, that it could not be shaken even by the many blunders he was guilty of; the nation however was not yet rendered so tame, but that it was a long while before they would quietly submit to that cardinal's administration; and we must allow that even but lately there has a noble spirit of liberty broke forth in that country, such a spirit of liberty, my Lords, as might probably reinstate the people in the full enjoyment of their former liberties and privileges, if it were not for the great standing army now kept up in that country. In Denmark, my Lords, it was their nobles that were the occasion of the loss of their liberties; they had for some time thrown the whole weight and charge of the government off of themselves, and had laid it on the necks of the Commons; the whole expence of the public they had for some time raised by taxes which fell chiefly upon the poor people, and to which they contributed but a trifle and the Commons being quite tired out with these oppressions and unjust exactions, resolved at last to put the whale power into the bands of their sovereign; so that whilst the nobles were sitting and contriving ways and means how to load the poor tradesmen and manufacturers with such caxes as did not much affect them, they were sent for to the castle, and there were obliged to join in, that deed by which an absolute power was pot into the hands of the King, who could not make a worse use of it than they had done: this was the method by which arbitrary power was established in Denmark, but it has ever since been supported only by a standing army. In Sweden, my Lords, their liberties were not only destroyed but they were again restored by their army; in this last change, my Lords, that country had the good luck to be most singularly happy, but how was that most strange and extraordinary turn of their affairs brought about? I have some reason to know it, because I was in that kingdom when it happened. The late king of Sweden, my lords, is well known to have been the darling both of his nobles and com mons; he was so much the darling of the whole Swedish nation, that almost every man in it was at all times ready to sacrifice both his life and his fortune in his service, and therefore be had no occasion to model his army for any bad purpose; he had employed none as officers in his army, but the nobility and quality of the kingdom, or such whose merit and services fully intitled them to whatever preferment they were honoured with by him. His prime minister however got at last too great an ascendant over him. Baron Gortz I mean, my Lords, who was a man of no high birth, nor any super-eminent qualities; yet by his cunning he got such a power over his master, that nothing was done without him, no post, civil or military, was bestowed but according to his direction; the men of the best quality in the kingdom, the greatest generals in the army, were obliged to submit, and to sue to him even for that which they were justly intitled to; if they shewed him the least neglect, they immediately lost all interest about the king; if any one of them disobliged the first minister, he might perhaps be allowed to keep his post in the army, he was made use of when they had occasion for his venturing his life for them;, but from the moment he disobliged the king's prime minister, he could not so much as make a subaltern officer; on the contrary his recommendation was a sure bar to any man's preferment. The nobility, the generals, all the chief men in the army were sensible of this slavery they lay under, and were resolved to free themselves therefrom if possible; but their government was then absolute, there was no way of coming at relief, but by making their king sensible of the discredit that accrued to him, by allowing himself to be so much under the management of any one man; They knew their king to be a man of judgment and penetration, and therefore a great number of them resolved at last upon venturing to present a memorial to him upon that head. This memorial, my Lords, was actually drawn up and signed, and was ready to have been presented, when that brave If the king had lived to have received this memorial, we cannot judge what might have been the consequence; notwithstanding its being signed by so many of the nobility and chief commanders, notwithstanding the king's judgment and penetration, his affection for his minister might have got the better of the respect he owed to such a number of his nobility and generals; and if so, as he was a most absolute prince, the memorial would have been doomed to be a seditious and a treasonable libel, and some of them would certainly have paid with their heads for their presumption; but the king's death rid them of this danger, and the prime minister who had done so many ill things, was immediately seized, tried, condemned and executed under the gallows. By this piece of public justice, the nobles and the generals of the army, whom he had principally offended, were satisfied, they did not desire to pursue their vengeance further than the grave; but, my Lords, the clergy of that kingdom, those men who but a few weeks before were his most humble slaves, those men who would have deified him if the Christian religion had not stood in their way, they had a mind to shew a superior degree of zeal, they petitioned in a body that his corps might be buried under the gallows. sion or his hopes of preferment in the army, or otherwise to do what he knows to be inconsistent with the law and liberties of his country. I hope, my lords, that a standing army shall never come to be a part of our constitution, but if ever it does, I will say that without such a regulation as I have inentioned, we shall then have nothing to depend on for the preservation of our liberties, but the honour of the army, the integrity of the clergy, and the vigilance of the lords. • From what I have said, my lords, it is apparent that a numerous standing army must always be of dangerous consequence to the constitution of this country; and I leave it to every man to judge, whether we ought to expose our constitution to such a danger, for the pretended apprehensions of any insurrection at home, or of any invasion from abroad? As to insurrections at home, we are in no danger of any such as long as his Majesty reigns in the hearts and affections of the generality of his subjects; and as to invasions from abroad, I think the little success the many designed invasions, mentioned by the noble duke, has met with, is an unanswerable argument for shewing us that we ought not to be under great apprehensions of any such in time to come; and that we ought not to subject ourselves to any thing that may be in the least dangerous to our constitution, for the sake of a danger which experience has shewn to be so very inconsiderable. If we should ever be threatened with a formidable invasion, we should have time to increase our army to any number we pleased; we should even have time to discipline that army before we could be attacked by any great force, and thereby we should be in condition to defend ourselves at land, if our enemies should have the good luck to escape our fleets at sea: and as to any small and unforeseen invasion, if ever any such should be intended against us, they may probably meet with the same fate that the former have done; but if they should meet with better luck, if they should come safe to land, they could not bring above five or six thousand men, our fleets would prevent their being reinforced, and surely an army of 12,000 men in Great Britain, and, another of equal number in Ireland, would be sufficient to give a good account of any such contemptible invaders. By the king's death the slavish dependence of the army was at an end, there was then no one man who could pretend to any absolute sway over the army; and as it was generally commanded by the nobles of the kingdom, they had it fresh in their memories what inconveniences both they and the whole nation had been subjected to by the absolute and uncontroulable will of their former king; as there was no one of them that could have any hopes of succeeding to his arbitrary power, therefore they all resolved to put both the government of the kingdom, and the command of the army, upon a new and a very different footing. As to the government of the kingdom, they established a limited monarchy, and finding that they must necessarily keep up a standing army to defend their large frontiers, they therefore resolved, in order that the army might not be entirely dependent on the crown, that for the future the officers thereof should have their several commissions, Quamdiu se bene gesserit.' This It is not now, my lords, proposed to disband regulation a nobleman of that country told me, our army entirely; it is not proposed to throw they took from the regulation we have in Eng-out the Bill now before us; we are for keeping land with respect to our judges. It is, my lords, a wise and a necessary regulation; it is a regulation that ought in every country to prevail, wherever a standing army makes a part of their constitution: In all such countries the officers' commissions ought certainly to be Quamdiu se bene gesserit,' and preferments ought to go in course according to seniority, some few cases excepted; for it is hard that a gentleman who has nothing but his commission to depend on for his daily bread, should be obliged either to forfeit his commis up as great a number as may be necessary for preserving the peace and quiet of the kingdom; but we are against keeping up such a number as may be dangerous to our constitution. Though the lords who were last year for a reduction, voted against the passing of the then MutinyBill, it is not from thence to be concluded, thas they were against any Mutiny-Bill, or any number of regular forces; they were against the whole Bill as it then stood, but if that Bill had been thrown out, another might have been brought in according to their liking, and that new Bill would then have been unanimously agreed to. The Earl of Ilay stood up and said: My Lords; Whatever some lords may be pleased to say about an army continued from year to year by Parliament, there is certainly a very great dif ference, my lords, between such an army and an army continued at the sole pleasure of the crown. It has, I think, been granted on all hands, that while our army is commanded by such officers as it is at present, while men of fortune and figure bave the command of the army, our liberties are secure; but it is said, that these officers may be turned out, this army may be so modelled and garbled as to be made fit for any bad purpose: this, my lords, I shall easily grant might be done, if our army were to be established for any number of years; if it were to be continued at the sole pleasure of the crown, an ambitious prince might be able to model it so as to make it subservient to his arbitrary views; but while it is continued only from year to year by Parliament, this is impossible to be done. It is no easy matter to model an army so as to make it fit for such purposes; we know how difficult it is to know the private sentiments of men's hearts; in such cases men often conceal their real inclinations under the cloak of a feigned zeal for the direct contrary opinion, which would make it very difficult for a government that had any designs against the liberties of the people, to know what officers were to be turned out, or who were proper to be continued, or to be put in the room of those turned out. It would be impossible to accomplish this in a year's time, and if any such practices were begun, if any steps should be made towards modelling the army for a bad purpose, the Parliament at their next meeting would most certainly take notice of it, and would apply a proper remedy before it could be possible for any prince or administration to make the wound incurable; and therefore, my lords, I must still be of opinion, that our army, while it is continued from year to year by Parliament, cannot be of the least ill conséquence to our constitution, were it much more numerous than what is now proposed. On the other hand, my lords, the danger of reducing any part of our army is very great: we know that such reductions have often been attended with designed invasions or insurrections against the government; this is a danger we know by experience, and therefore in common prudence we ought not to come into any measure, by which our country may be again exposed to such a danger. It is probable that none of those invasions lately intended against us would have been successful, though they had got safe ashore; I hope no such ever will; but every one of them, if they had landed, would have thrown the nation into terrible convulsions. Is then, my lords, the pence and quiet of our country of no consideration? shall we expose our country to frequent alarms and confusions, for the sake of avoiding and imaginary danger, a fear which can have, no foundation, as long as our army is continued only from year to year by parliament? We know, my lords, that there is a party in the nation disaffected to the government, there always will, I am afraid, be such a party; and they, or at least a great many of them, will always join any invasion that can be made upon us: even out of charity to them we ought not to afford them any hopes of success, by disbanding a part of our army; while they have no ropes of success they may grumble a little in private, but they will never venture to rebel openly against the government, and while they continue in a peaceable state, they may live easily as subjects, they will at least preserve their lives and estates from being forfeited by the law; whereas if we reduce our army, it will encourage foreigners to invade us, it will encourage the disaffected to rebel against the government, the nation will never be free from alarms, and we must be every now and then executing, or at least forfeiting some of our countrymen, perhaps some of our relations. The Earl of Bristol spoke next: My Lords, I have often heard the present argument debated in parliament; I was one of those who were the cause of the army's being reduced so low after the peace of Ryswick, perhaps I repented of what I did at that time, because of the turn that the affairs of Europe took soon after: but I am fully convinced, I never shall have occasion to repent of being for the reduction now proposed. For my part, my lords, I cannot but say, that the question now before us puts me in mind of what happened to a farm house of mine in the country: the wall of the house upon one side had failed, and the house bad sunk a little; yet it might have stood for many years without any necessity of pulling i quite down in order to be rebuilt, for whic reason, I believe, I should have then contenth ed myself with repairing it a little, and addin some butteresses to that wall which had failed & but some workmen persuaded me, that they' could raise it up, and repair the wall without pulling the house down, and I being prevailed on, to work they went; but in planting posts and other engines to raise up that side which had sunk, I do not know how, whether by design or by the unskilfulness of the workmen, they raised the house so high on that side, that they tumbled it quite over. At last the question being put upon the earl of Oxford's motion, it was carried in the negative. The Mutiny Bill passed.] March 8. The Bill was read the third time and passed.. Protest against it.] "Dissentient' "For the reasons entered on the journal last session, against the number of men, then and now to be established, which reasons we refer to, and think the circumstances Colonies; upon which Sir John Barnard opened to the House a Petition of Richard Partridge, agent for the colony of Rhode Island and Providence plantations in America, against the said Bill; and moved for leave to bring it up, in which he was seconded by Mr. Perry, but opposed by Sir William Yonge; who stood up, and spoke as follows: Mr. Speaker; The Petition which the honourable member over the way has now in hand, is, I find, a petition praying for leave to be heard against a Bill now depending in this House, by which some certain duties are to be laid on several commodities mentioned in the Bill. I believe, Sir, it has been the constant usage of this House for many years, to receive no petitions against duties to be laid on; but as there are none who understand better than you, Sir, the practice of the House in such cases, therefore I shall in this submit entirely to your determination, and hope you will give us your opinion thereupon. However, Sir, I must take notice of another thing, which I observe in the petition as it has been opened by the honourable gentleman; they therein tell us, that as to the Bill now depending before us, they apprehend it to be against their charter. This, I must say, is something very extraordinary, and, in my opinion, looks very unlike aiming at an independency, and disclaiming the authority and jurisdiction of this House; as if this House had not a power to tax then, or to make any laws for the regulating of the affairs of their colony; *"On this occasion, all the arts and influence of opposition were called forth to excite clamours against the measures. Not only the members solicited the attendance of their friends, but letters were delivered by the beadles, and other officers in the parishes and wards of the city, to induce a numerous party to assemble at the doors, and in the avenues to the House, to overawe the proceedings of the legislature. Walpole was apprized of these proceedings, but not to be deterred from the prosecution of his design."-Coxe's Walpole. therefore, Sir, if there were no other reason for our not receiving their petition, I should on this single account be against giving leave to bring it up. Lord Tyrconnell replied, Sir; I cannot agree with the honourable member who spoke last, for I shall never give my vote for rejecting a petition before I know it read. The question now before us, is not, what is in it; and this I cannot know till I hear whether the desire of the petition shall be grant ed or no? After the petition is brought up and read to the House, we may then judge whether the desire thereof be reasonable or not, and may accordingly grant or refuse it, but the refusing to have the petition brought up and read to the House, seems really to be a determining the desire of the petition to be unreasonable, before we know what it is; and therefore, Sir, I shall be for having it brought up. Mr. Winnington spoke next. Sir; I stand up to speak to order and to the method of proceeding in this House; it has been a custom always observed in this House, not to receive any petitions against those Bills which were brought in for the laying on of any new duties; I do not indeed say but that there may be some instances to the contrary, but I am sure they are very rare, and never happened but upon some very extraordinary occasion; for if we were to receive all such petitions there would be such multitudes of them against every such Bill, that the nation might be undone for want of an immediate supply for the public use, while we were sitting to hear frivolous petitions against those Bills brought in for granting that supply. The honourable gentleman near me took notice of the petitioners pretending, that the Bill now before us is against their charter; I hope, Sir, they have no charter which debars this House from taxing them as well as any other subject of this nation; I am sure they can have no such charter; but if it were possible, if they really had such a charter, they could not say that the Bill now before us were any infringement of it, because the tax to be'thereby laid on, is no tax upon them, but a tax which is to be laid upon the French only; and shall this House, Sir, receive any petitions, or hear any reasons that can be offered, for not taxing the French, more especially when the tax to be laid upon them will most evidently tend to the encouragement of our own sugar colonies? I hope, Sir, no such petition will ever be so much as be allowed to be brought up or presented to this House. Sir John Barnard answered; The Petitioners do not pretend to say, that the Bill now depending is against their charter, nor did I say any such thing when I opened the petition to this House; at least if I did I am sure I did injustice to the Petition, for the words of it are, That they humbly conceive, that the Bill now depending. if passed into a law, would be highly prejudicial to their charter. But, Sir, I am really surprized at the method of rea |