Wit will as well as piety decline.


Next to this, which I esteem as the most noble and most useful
proposal in this book, I proceed to academies for military studies,
and because I design rather to express my meaning than make a large
book, I bring them all into one chapter.

I allow the war is the best academy in the world, where men study by
necessity and practice by force, and both to some purpose, with duty
in the action, and a reward in the end; and it is evident to any man
who knows the world, or has made any observations on things, what an
improvement the English nation has made during this seven years'
war.

But should you ask how clear it first cost, and what a condition
England was in for a war at first on this account--how almost all
our engineers and great officers were foreigners, it may put us in
mind how necessary it is to have our people so practised in the arts
of war that they may not be novices when they come to the
experiment.

I have heard some who were no great friends to the Government take
advantage to reflect upon the king, in the beginning of his wars in
Ireland, that he did not care to trust the English, but all his
great officers, his generals, and engineers were foreigners. And
though the case was so plain as to need no answer, and the persons
such as deserved none, yet this must be observed, though it was very
strange: that when the present king took possession of this
kingdom, and, seeing himself entering upon the bloodiest war this