The first was adopted in an hour of urgent expediency, in order to restrain the uncontrouled outrages of a discontented soldiery, on account of arrears due to them. This act was passed in great haste upon the 12th day of April, 1689, and has progressively experienced these various improvements that arise out of occasions. It undergoes annually a legislative sanction, under the title of the Mutiny Bill. Half-pay was a gift decreed upon the 18th of January, 1697, and has subsequently involved many a doubt, whether as having been intended in the light of a retaining fee, or as a reward for past services. Opposite decisions have authorised different constructions, while the lapse of more than one hundred years has not yet explicitly brought the point to an issue. The manly and independent spirit of our judges, pure as these laws that controul their opinions, has not been able to adjust the question. In the case of General Ross, which was submitted to their enquiry and determination--they resolved that he could not be amenable, _as a half-pay officer_, to military jurisdiction; but the discussion extended no farther. In 1715 a number of officers, however, who drew this recompence from the public, most ingloriously joined the Pretender. The issue being unfortunate for them, they were all taken prisoners, and afterwards tried and executed by _martial_ law; although they might have been capitally convicted _as rebels, by the common law of the land_. In having adduced these opposite examples, I cannot withhold a remark, that under no one head of the articles of war is this description of men noticed; and I can readily anticipate the answer of an Englishman, were I to ask him if any laws should affect such an object as I have defined, in which he is not expressly specified? In this flourishing country, where industry and enterprize are open to all, it often happens that an officer, when the State no longer wants his services, turns his attention and the little capital he may possess, to commercial pursuits. In this new profession he very probably advances the public interests more essentially than were he recalled to his former duties, upon every fresh emergency.