or teach them better to submit to the austere rules of military discipline. It will make them admirable citizens after the French mode, but not quite so good soldiers after any mode. A doubt might well arise, whether the conversations at these good tables, would fit them a great deal the better for the character of mere instruments, which this veteran officer and statesman justly ob|serves, the nature of things always requires an army to be.
Concerning the likelihood of this improvement in discipline, by the free conversation of the sol|diers with the municipal festive societies, which is thus officially encouraged by royal authority and sanction, we may judge by the state of the mu|nicipalities themselves, furnished to us by the war minister in this very speech. He conceives good hopes of the success of his endeavours towards re|storing order for the present from the good disposi|tion of certain regiments; but he finds something cloudy with regard to the future. As to preventing the return of confusion
for this, the administra|tion (says he) cannot be answerable to you, as long as they see the municipalities arrogate to themselves an authority over the troops, which your institutions have reserved wholly to the mo|narch. You have fixed the limits of the military authority and the municipal authority. You have bounded the action, which you have per|mitted to the latter over the former, to the right of requisition; but never did the letter or the spirit of your decrees authorise the commons in these municipalities to break the officers, to try
