They
followed the fortunes of such leaders whether in service or out of
it; and, when dismissed from that of their sovereign, they assisted
them in robbing on the highway, or in pillaging the country till the
sovereign was compelled to take them back, or give them estates in
rent-free tenure for their maintenance and that of their followers.
All this is reversed under our government. We do the soldiers' work
much better than it was ever before done with one-tenth--nay, I may
say, one-fiftieth--part of the numbers that were employed to do it by
our predecessors; and the whole number of the soldiers employed by us
is not equal to that of those who were under them actually in the
transition state, or on their way from the place where they had lost
service to the place where they hoped to find it; extorting the means
of subsistence either by intimidation or by open violence. Those who
are in this transition state under us are neither armed, accoutred,
nor mounted; we do not disband en masse, we only dismiss individuals
for offences, and they have no leaders to range themselves under.
Those who come to seek our service are the sons of yeomen, bred up
from their infancy with all those feelings of deference for superiors
which we require in soldiers.
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