A circumstance in the exploits of my public career which made, perhaps, a more general impression than any other event of my life, was the proposal in 1792 for arming the property of the Kingdom in a sort of horse militia. My first suggestion of this idea was in May (of that year). Should any have claimed it, or should any hereafter form such a claim, it ought in truth and strict candour to be absolutely rejected. The proposal was more formally made in August of the same year in the ‘Annals,’ vol. xviii. p. 495, under the title of French events.[149] In the end of 1792 and the beginning of 1793 these papers were collected and much enlarged in a pamphlet entitled, ‘The Example of France,’ &c. which ran speedily through four numerous editions, and excited a very general attention. The author was publicly thanked in resolutions of associated assemblies, and my great plea of a horse militia produced almost immediately three volunteer corps of cavalry, which multiplied rapidly through the Kingdom. It is not known that any persons or any bodies of men ever laid claim to a priority in this idea; accordingly my health was the first toast given for being the origin of those corps, which, when assembled, had this opportunity of publicly declaring their opinion. The scheme took with astonishing celerity, and became the parent of a measure of a very different complexion, which was putting arms into the hands of thousands without property, and upon whose allegiance and constitutional principle but little reliance could be placed. Government received demands for arms to the amount of above 700,000 men. The Ministers were alarmed, and saw too late the consequence of their own blindness and incapacity. They refused their consent, in many cases without properly discriminating between men with and without property, and felt themselves in so awkward a position that it is no wonder their conduct continued void of any steady adherence to the principle of the original proposition. Had my plan not only been adopted but carried into execution, strictly upon the principles I had explained, we might from that moment to the present have had a horse militia, absolutely under the command of Government, numbering from 100,000 to 200,000 men, which might, by progressive improvements, have been matured into a force efficient for every purpose. It is very seldom that so private an individual can by a happy thought become the origin of a system which, had my principles been steadily adhered to, would have been attended with inconceivable benefit, and none of those evils, real or imaginary, afterwards attributed to volunteers in general.