The army will
not long look to an Assembly acting through the organ of false show and
palpable imposition. They will not seriously yield obedience to a
prisoner. They will either despise a pageant, or they will pity a
captive king. This relation of your army to the crown will, if I am not
greatly mistaken, become a serious dilemma in your politics.
It is besides to be considered, whether an Assembly like yours, even
supposing that it was in possession of another sort of organ, through
which its orders were to pass, is fit for promoting the obedience and
discipline of an army. It is known that armies have hitherto yielded a
very precarious and uncertain obedience to any senate or popular
authority; and they will least of all yield it to an Assembly which is
to have only a continuance of two years. The officers must totally lose
the characteristic disposition of military men, if they see with perfect
submission and due admiration the dominion of pleaders,--especially when
they find that they have a new court to pay to an endless succession of
those pleaders, whose military policy, and the genius of whose command,
(if they should have any,) must be as uncertain as their duration is
transient. In the weakness of one kind of authority, and in the
fluctuation of all, the officers of an army will remain for some time
mutinous and full of faction, until some popular general, who
understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the
true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself.
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