“‘The situation of the privates has long been admitted to be extremely hard. It is a law (which in former years was obeyed) that a soldier shall receive three shillings a week for his subsistence. It has so happened that of late years the officers have thought proper to despise this law, and to give the soldier only eighteenpence or two shillings. This is evidently too little for the bare purpose of existence; and though he has subsisted on it of late years, and might with our good will have done so to the day of judgment, as there now is a necessity to humour the wretch a little, _for reasons best known to ourselves_; we have, by a late regulation, made his pay adequate to what he always ought to have enjoyed: an object that we are confident must meet the warm approbation of our majority in this House. The public burden will, indeed, be increased by this, but it is certainly much better to tax the people to their last farthing than to wound the _honour_ of our trusty and well-beloved, the officers of the army, by any odious and _ungentlemanlike_ investigation of their conduct.’ “It particularly becomes you, the British Soldier, to look upon this matter in its proper light. The pretended addition to your subsistence is, in fact, no addition at all; you will now receive no more than you always ought to have received.… If you should have the fortune to become a non-commissioned officer, and were to deduct but a penny from a man unlawfully, you know the consequences would be breaking and flogging, and refunding the money so deducted; but here you see your officers have been guilty of the practice for years, and now it is found out not a hair of one of their heads is touched; they are even permitted to remain in the practice, and a sum of money is taken from the public to coax you with, now it seems likely that you may be wanted.…