How much of this success was to be ascribed to that part of the regulation which this motion proposes to be changed, it is not, my lords, within my province to determine; the great commander whom I have the honour to oppose, can best explain to your lordships the province of every officer in the field, and how far the number of inferiour officers may influence the success of a battle and the fate of a kingdom.

But to me, my lords, the establishment of our armies, comprising different views, and connecting various subordinate regulations, may be compared to a medicine composed of different ingredients, and found infallibly efficacious in a dangerous disease, in which, though some of the parts may seem to physicians of the profoundest learning, superfluous or improper, it would be no less than the folly of preferring experiments to life, to make any alteration.

The wantonness of innovation, my lords, is a dangerous disease of the mind; in a private station, it prompts men to be always discontented with what they find, and to lose the enjoyment of good in search of something better; it incites them to leave the safe and beaten tracks of life, in search of those which they imagine nearer, but, which are, at best, less secure, and which generally lead them to points far different from that to which they originally intended to direct their course.

It is dangerous, my lords, to admit any alteration which is not absolutely necessary, for one innovation makes way for another.  The parts of a constitution, like a complicated machine, are fitted to each other, nor can one be changed without changing that which corresponds to it.  This necessity is not always foreseen, but when discovered by experience is generally complied with; for every man is more inclined to hazard farther changes, than to confess himself mistaken by retracting his scheme.  Thus, my lords, one change introduces another, till the original constitution is entirely destroyed.

By the ambition of innovation, my lords, have almost all those empires been destroyed, of which nothing now is left but the memory.  Every human establishment has its advantages and its inconveniencies, and by weak attempts to remedy these defects, which, notwithstanding the utmost attention, will embarrass the machine of government, alterations have been introduced which have been quickly followed by a total dissolution.

There seem, my lords, to be few regulations on which it is more dangerous to make experiments than on that of the armies of a nation.  We are sufficiently convinced how much of success is the consequence of courage, and that courage is only an opinion of our own superiority, arising from certain circumstances, either imaginary or real.