It is already admitted that an army is necessary; the pay of that army is already established; the accidental scarcity of forage and victuals is such, that the pay is not sufficient to maintain them; how then must the deficiency be supplied?  It has been proposed, either to fix the price of provisions with respect to them, or to advance their wages in some proportion to the price of provisions.  Both these methods seem to meet with disapprobation, and yet the army is to be supported.

Those who reason thus, do surely not expect to be answered, or at least expect from a reply no other satisfaction than that of seeing the time of the session wasted, and the administration harassed with trivial delays; for what can be urged with any hope of success to him who will openly deny contradictory propositions, who will neither move nor stand still, who will neither disband an army nor support it?

Whether these gentlemen conceive that an army may subsist without victuals till the time of scarcity is over, or whether they have raised those forces only to starve them, I am not sagacious enough to conjecture, but shall venture to observe, that if they have such a confidence in the moderation and regularity of the soldiers, as to imagine that they will starve with weapons in their hands, that they will live within the sight of full tables, and languish with hunger, and perish for want of necessaries, rather than diminish the superfluities of others, they ought for ever to cease their outcries about the licentiousness, insolence, and danger of a standing army.

But, not to sink into levity unworthy of this assembly, may I be permitted to hint that these arts of protracting our debates, are by no means consistent with the reasons for which we are assembled, and that it is a much better proof, both of ability and integrity, to remove objections, than to raise them, and to facilitate, than to retard, the business of the publick.

The proposal made at first was only to elucidate a law which had been regularly observed for fifty years, and to remove such ambiguities as tended only to embarrass the innholders, not to relieve them.

To this many objections have been made, and much declamation has been employed to display the hardships of maintaining soldiers, but no better method has been yet discovered, nor do I expect that any will be started not attended with greater difficulties.

In all political questions, questions too extensive to be fully comprehended by speculative reason, experience is the guide which a wise man will follow with the least distrust, and it is no trivial recommendation of the present method, that it has been so long pursued without any formidable inconvenience or loud complaints.

Hardships, even when real, are alleviated by long custom; we bear any present uneasiness with less regret, as we less remember the time in which we were more happy:  at least, by long acquaintance with any grievance we gain this advantage, that we know it in its whole extent, that it cannot be aggravated by our imagination, and that there is no room for suspecting that any misery is yet behind more heavy than that which we have already borne.