“Amongst the many curious manœuvres of the present administration, I do not recollect one that marks more strongly its character than the late alteration in the pay and establishment of the army. The augmentation (as they would insinuate it is) of the pay of the British soldiers is represented as arising from a consideration of the wretchedness of their situation; and the pretended reduction of the foot forces is held out to the public as an act of œconomy. The people, I am much afraid, are satisfied with this.… The situation of the privates in our marching regiments of foot was really so miserable, that every one endued with the least compassion, must rejoice to find that a _morsel of bread_ has been by any means added to that scanty meal; and the enormous load of taxes, that press out the very vitals of the people, ensures a favourable reception to every reduction, or pretended reduction, of public expense, let it be ever so trifling or absurd.… “I propose to make a few observations on the alteration that has taken place in the soldiers’ pay; in doing which, although I shall be very concise, I have the vanity to think I shall discover a little better information on the subject than the Secretary at War did at his opening of it in the House of Commons; when he observed (after having stated the saving that would arise from the reduction in the infantry) that ‘against this saving he had to mention an increase that had been made to the pay of the private soldiers to the amount of 23,000_l._ The situation of the privates had long been admitted to have been extremely hard. It had in _former years_ been the regulation that a soldier should receive three shillings a week for his subsistence. It has _of late years so happened_ that he had not had for that purpose above eighteenpence or two shillings. This was evidently too little for the bare purpose of existence. By the late regulation his pay was to be made adequate to the subsistence the common soldier _formerly enjoyed_, an object which he was confident would meet with the warm approbation of every man.’… “As the Secretary observed, ‘the situation of the privates had long been admitted to have been extremely hard;‘ but people had not the least notion that it ’had so happened of late years, that the soldier had only eighteenpence or two shillings a week for his subsistence.’ Men of humanity thought the soldier’s situation hard, but every one thought that he received _three shillings a week_ for his subsistence; and why any man unacquainted with the abuses of the army should think otherwise I cannot imagine, seeing that there is an Act of Parliament, a law of the land, that declares it shall be so.” [After reciting the regulations that existed, and which were yearly renewed in each Mutiny Act, he proceeds:--]