The scheme, however, though it easily received the approval of the House of Commons, was doomed, ere long, to have a severe sifting. In both Houses the question was very roughly handled by the Opposition. Had it been brought forward as a specific measure at first, it would, in all probability, have been rejected or passed by a scanty majority; but being covered by a vaster and more momentous question, it escaped observation and slipped through the Commons concealed under the wings of its parent. The time, however, had arrived, when the subject, stripped of its covering, should be laid bare, and fairly and openly discussed; but after a warm debate, the project was again sanctioned, and the formation of the corps confirmed. A summary of the debate, which originated in the introduction, for the first time, of the corps of artificers into the Mutiny Bill, and which is given in Dodsley’s ‘Annual Register’ for 1788,[71] is subjoined. ----- Footnote 71: Dodsley’s ‘Annual Register.’ Second edit., 1790, pp. 121-123. ----- “On the 12th of March, the report of the Committee on the Mutiny Bill was brought up; and on reading the clause for incorporating in the army the newly-raised corps of military artificers, the same was strongly objected to as a dangerous innovation, and as militating against the most favoured principles of the constitution. The same system, it was said, might next be extended to shipwrights, and so on to every description of persons in the service of the executive government; and therefore the House was called upon to repel so alarming an innovation _in limine_. In defence of the measure it was urged, that it would be attended with an annual saving of 2,000_l._, upon an expenditure of 22,000_l._; and that it was necessary to extend the military law to the corps in question, as the only means of keeping them together, and preventing their desertion of the public service in time of war. “This disposition to adopt a new principle of expediency and economy, upon a subject which went to the diminution of the liberties of the subject, instead of the old principle of actual necessity, was severely reprobated. Several country gentlemen declared, that if the House should agree to put 600 Englishmen under martial law, merely for the paltry consideration of saving 2,000_l._ per annum, they would betray their constituents, and would be devoid of those feelings for the constitution, which ought to make their distinguishing character. It was denied that any necessity for so extraordinary a surrender of the liberties of a part of the community was made out; it having never been asserted, nor being indeed true, in fact, that there was any difficulty in procuring artificers for the Ordnance service in time of war. The sense of the House being taken on the clause, there appeared, ayes 114, noes 67.[72] ----- Footnote 72: