for life. Let things, in other respects, go on as formerly, and there will not, I apprehend, be any reason to complain. I cannot see why all the machinery of law should be set to work upon our established military system. My only wish is to have it released from that machinery-to have all the obstructions in its way removed.

A great medical writer, of the last century, has laid down a maxim for the conduct of the understanding in matters of science, which may be applied with little variation to the regulation of men's conduct in civil and practical life. Vera cernit qui aliena rejicit. Truth will appear as soon as you get rid of error. Affairs will often proceed perfectly well, if you will only remove the impediments and obstructions that are turning them from their proper course. Something analogous to this idea is what I should recommend upon the subject before the house. With good management, I am quite sure that men enough could be found in this country for the ample recruiting of our regular army. There is no scarcity of population. On the contrary, it is far more considerable than at any former period; and there can be no doubt that with the aid of proper encouragement and countenance, by the grant of certain privileges and immunities to those who had served in the army, such as are granted with sufficient liberality to all who have served in the militia, (viz. the right of setting up trades in corporate towns, &c.) and in general by securing to the army its proper proportion of the benefits attached to other modes of life, a supply would be

found of men willing to become soldiers, as ample and as well proportioned to the demand, as of men ready to engage in any other trade or calling. I cannot believe it possible that there should not, when I reflect that the poors' rates of this country amount annually, according to the account on the table, to 5,000,000l. and when I recollect the extraordinary measure lately taken in Scotland, the policy of which by the bye I very much doubt, of granting such a large sum of money for the construction of a canal, in order to give employment to the poor of that district, and to prevent their emigration to a foreign country. This idea of laying a tax for the purpose of providing employment for a particular class of persons, I cannot but consider as a real poor rate. It is accordingly liable to all the objections chargeable upon measures of that description. I mention it here for the purpose of showing, that the prospect for recruiting our army is by no means discouraging, either on the score of our population, or (unhappily) of the state in which a great part of that population is placed. But I am then told of our trade, and the numbers employed in various branches. I have, however, no hesitation in saying, that trade is favourable to recruiting, and not less so perhaps in its flourishing and growing than in its declining state. It is rarely that trade can advance rapidly without great fluctuations, the trade receding in one channel as it flows into another; and thus numbers are successively left out of employment, and glad to betake themselves for subsistence to the provision which the army offers.

From these considerations I can see no foundation for the endeavours so often made to ascribe to scarcity of population the difficulty which recruiting for the regular army has met with for some time back. Let. us try to strip that recruiting of the impediments which have hitherto surrounded it; and there is no reason whatever why we should despair of seeing it go on well. At all events let the experiment be fairly tried. No one surely would wish to have recourse to measures of compulsion in the first instance. When measures of another sort have been tried and have failed; when we have employed, without effect, the plain, obvious, and ordinary methods, then will be time enough to resort to the harshness of compulsory measures, and such strange, wild, and new-fangled projects as that which is now proposed.

Upon the whole I cannot persuade myself to assent to a proposition that has no immediate object but to form a stationary and half military force; and no tendency to increase our regular army but through the medium of a process from which I have no hopesby a kind of double distillation, of which no one has hitherto shown either the use or the necessity. A notion seems to prevail, that a soldier is a thing that cannot be produced by one continued act ;-that there must be a second operation. We create this army of men for limited service, as a kind of false stomach in which the aliment is to be lodged for a time, till it can be removed to its proper receptacle, and there finally elaborated for the use and sustenance of the state. Of the whole of this plan the house has heard enough

before. Experiments have been already made upon many parts of it, and certainly not with such success as to encourage a perseverance in the system. But nothing will deter us. There is a perfect passion for legislating upon this subject, and for effecting every thing by the most complicated and circuitous means. My Honourable Friend seems to be actuated by the same sort of feeling as that of the lover in the Apprentice, who, when he is to escape with his mistress, will not suffer her to go out by the street-door, though he is told it is open, but insists upon her descending from the window, by the means of his ladder of ropes. It is in vain that the maid protests that the door is open, and her mistress has nothing to do but to walk down the great stairs. Oh no! says he, but what then becomes of my rope-ladder? Such is in truth the language of the present moment. In all this multiplication of plans I repeat, that very little is to be found congenial with the true military system of the country. Every thing that has yet been brought forward on the subject has proved to be extravagant, and calculated to produce the opposite of good towards the substantial defence of the country; and of the same nature I am persuaded will the plan be which the house has just heard. I am ready to say that no man is more competent to devise a plan requiring great combination of parts, than my Honourable Friend; but my persuasion on this subject is, that no such plan necessary; on the contrary, that it must be injurious, particularly when founded on the principles of

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the system for some time back acted upon; and therefore I feel it my duty to express my disapprobation of the project he has submitted to the house.

After some further objections had been urged against the proposed measure by Mr. Addington, Mr. Fox, and other members, who were replied to by Lord Castlereagh and Mr. Pitt, the bill was brought in, and read a first time.