Such desperate acts, and the opinions infused along with them, into heads already inflamed by youth and wine, are enough to scatter madness and sedition through a whole camp.  So seldom upon their knees to pray, and so often to curse!  This is not properly atheism, but a sort of anti-religion prescribed by the Devil, and which an atheist of common sense would scorn as an absurdity.  I have heard it mentioned as a common practice last autumn, somewhere or other, to drink damnation and confusion[10] (and this with circumstances very aggravating and horrid) to the new ministry, and to those who had any hand in turning out the old; that is to say, to those persons whom her Majesty has thought fit to employ in her greatest affairs, with something more than a glance against the Qu[een] herself.  And if it be true that these orgies were attended with certain doubtful words of standing by their g[enera]l, who without question abhorred them; let any man consider the consequence of such dispositions, if they should happen to spread.  I could only wish for the honour of the Army, as well as of the Qu[een] and ministry, that a remedy had been applied to the disease, in the place and time where it grew.  If men of such principles were able to propagate them in a camp, and were sure of a general for life, who had any tincture of ambition, we might soon bid farewell to ministers and parliaments, whether new or old.

I am only sorry such an accident has happened towards the close of a war, when it is chiefly the interest of those gentlemen who have posts in the army, to behave themselves in such a manner as might encourage the legislature to make some provision for them, when there will be no further need of their services.  They are to consider themselves as persons by their educations unqualified for many other stations of life.  Their fortunes will not suffer them to retain to a party after its fall, nor have they weight or abilities to help towards its resurrection.  Their future dependence is wholly upon the prince and Parliament, to which they will never make their way, by solemn execrations of the ministry; a ministry of the Qu[een]’s own election, and fully answering the wishes of her people.  This unhappy step in some of their brethren, may pass for an uncontrollable argument, that politics are not their business or their element.  The fortune of war hath raised several persons up to swelling titles, and great commands over numbers of men, which they are too apt to transfer along with them into civil life, and appear in all companies as if it were at the head of their regiments, with a sort of deportment that ought to have been dropt behind, in that short passage to Harwich.  It puts me in mind of a dialogue in Lucian,[11] where Charon wafting one of their predecessors over Styx, ordered him to strip off his armour and fine clothes, yet still thought him too heavy; “But” (said he) “put off likewise that pride and presumption, those high-swelling words, and that vain-glory;” because they were of no use on the other side the water.  Thus if all that array of military grandeur were confined to the proper scene, it would be much more for the interest of the owners, and less offensive to their fellow subjects.[12]