The conclusion of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was followed by the usual reduction of the forces in Britain. The ten new regiments and several other corps were disbanded, leaving for the cavalry all the regiments now in the Army List down to the Fourteenth Hussars, and in the infantry the Foot Guards and the First to the Forty-ninth Regiments of the Line. The strength of all corps was of course diminished and the British Establishment was fixed at thirty thousand men, two-thirds of them for service at home and one-third for colonial garrisons. The rest of the Army, thirty-seven regiments in all, but very weak in numbers, was as usual turned over to the Irish Establishment. Efforts were of course made in both Houses of Parliament to cut down the numbers of the Army to a still lower figure, and the antiquated arguments in favour of such a step were repeated as though they had not already done duty a thousand times within the past forty years. Nay, so vigorous is the old age of folly and of faction that men were still found, when the Mutiny Act was brought forward, to urge the needlessness of courts-martial in time of peace. These childish representations, however, received little notice or encouragement; while, on the other hand, divers projects for reform in the Army were brought forward which, even though they led to no result, received at least careful attention and intelligent debate. Of these matters it will be more convenient to speak when the narrative of the war is concluded. For although peace had been proclaimed, and estimates and establishment had been accordingly reduced, the struggle with France, far from being closed, was not even suspended abroad. It would seem that not a few members of both Houses were alive to the fact; while fugitive notices in the newspapers, announcing that "Mr. Clive, a volunteer, had the command given to him to attack a place called Arcourt," may have suggested it even to the gossips of the coffee-houses. The Government, however, was not one which could be expected to take thought for the morrow, or indeed for anything beyond the retention of power. It was that Administration which had been formed by Henry Pelham in 1744, and is generally identified with the name of his brother, the Duke of Newcastle, who is remembered chiefly through his ignorance of the fact that Cape Breton is an island. This deplorable person possessed no talent beyond an infinite capacity for such intrigue as lifts incompetence to high office, and was only less of a curse to England than Madame de Pompadour was to France. One able man, however, there was in the lower ranks of the Administration, William Pitt, who, after a vain effort to become Secretary at War, had accepted the post of Paymaster of the Forces. He now lay quiet, though not without occasional outbursts of mutiny, abiding his time and fulfilling the duties of his place with an integrity heretofore unknown in the Paymaster's Office. [Sidenote: 1749.]