army, to behave themselves in such a manner, as might encourage the legislature to make some provision for them, when there will be no farther need of their services. They are to consider themselves as persons, by their education, unqualified for many other stations of life. Their fortunes will not suffer them to retain[1] to a party after its fall, nor have they weight or abilities to help toward its resurrection. Their future dependence is wholly upon the prince and parliament, to which they will never make their way by solemn execrations of the ministry; a ministry of the queen's own election, and fully answering the wishes of her people. This unhappy step in some of their brethren, may pass for an uncontrollable argument, that politicks are not their business, or their element. The fortune of war has raised several persons up to swelling titles, and great commands over numbers of men, which they are too apt to transfer along with them into civil life, and appear in all companies, as if they were at the head of their regiments, with a sort of deportment that ought to have been dropt behind in that short passage to Harwich. It puts me in mind of a dialogue in Lucian, where Charon, wafting one of their predecessors over Styx, ordered him to strip off his armour and fine clothes, yet still thought him too heavy; "But, said he, put off likewise that pride and presumption, those high-swelling words, and that vain glory;" because they were of no use on
- ↑ 'To retain to' is not grammar; 'retain,' being a verb active, will not admit of the particle 'to,' after it. 'Adhere to' is proper, as being a verb neuter. Or if the word retain should be preferred, it should be used in the substantive, not the verb, as thus to 'be retainers to a party,' &c.
