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The reason for which publick-houses are assigned for the quarters of soldiers, is partly the greater conveniency of accommodating them in families that subsist, by the entertainment of strangers, and partly the nature of their profession, which, by exposing them to frequent encounters with the rude and the debauched, enables them either to bear or repress the insolence of a soldier.
Many of those, sir, who are styled keepers of publick-houses, and on whom soldiers are quartered under that denomination, have no conveniency of furnishing provisions, because they never sell them; such are many of the keepers of livery stables, among whom it is the common method to pay soldiers a small weekly allowance, instead of lodging them in their houses, a lodging being all which they conceive themselves obliged to provide, and all that the soldiers have hitherto required; nor can we make any alteration in this method without introducing the license and insolence of soldiers into private houses; into houses hitherto unacquainted with any degree of riot, incivility, or uproar.
It is to be remembered, that small beer, like other liquors, is charged with an excise in publick-houses; and that two quarts will probably cost the landlord a penny, and as we cannot suppose that fire, candles, vinegar, salt, pepper, and the use of utensils, and lodging, can be furnished for less than threepence a-day, every soldier that is quartered upon a publick-house, may be considered as a tax of six pounds a-year a heavy burden, which surely ought not to be aggravated by unnecessary impositions.
It has been for many years understood that innholders and keepers of publick-houses were obliged by this law to supply soldiers quartered upon them with diet and small beer, and hay and straw for their horses, at such rates as are mentioned in the act; nor can I discover that these clauses admit of any other interpretation, or that any other could be intended by the senate by which it was enacted.
With regard to barracks, I cannot deny that they are justly names of terrour to a free nation, that they tend to make an army seem part of our constitution, and may contribute to infuse into the soldiers a disregard of their fellow-subjects, and an indifference about the liberties of their country; but I cannot discover any connexion between a provision for the support of soldiers in publick-houses, in a state of constant familiarity with their countrymen, and the erection of barracks, by which they will be, perhaps for ever, separated from them, nor can discover any thing in the method of supporting them now recommended that does not tend rather to the promotion of mutual good offices, and the confirmation of friendship and benevolence.
But, my lords, this argument will vanish, when it is considered that those justices to whom the law commits the superintendency of publick-houses, are superintended themselves by men who derive their authority from a higher power, and whose censures are more formidable than judicial penalties.
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