Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/383

Rh crown, where it is agreed, that a deduction shall be made out of those subsidies, in proportion to the number of men wanting in that complement which the king is to maintain. But, whatever might have been the reasons for this proceeding, it seems they are above the understanding of the present lord treasurer ; who, not entering into those refinements of paying the publick money, upon private considerations, has been so uncourtly as to stop it. This disappointment, I suppose, has put the court of Lisbon upon other expedients, of raising the price of forage, so as to force us either to lessen our number of troops, or to be at double expense in maintaining them; and this, at a time when their own product, as well as the import of corn, was never greater; and of demanding a duty upon the soldiers clothes we carried over for those troops, which have been their sole defence against an inveterate enemy; whose example might have infused courage, as well as taught them discipline, if their spirits had been capable of receiving either.

In order to augment our forces every year, in the same proportion as those for whom we fight diminish theirs, we have been obliged to hire troops from several princes of the empire, whose ministers and residents here have perpetually importuned the court with unreasonable demands, under which our late ministers thought fit to be passive. For those demands were always backed with a threat to recall their soldiers; which was a thing not to be heard of, because it might discontent the Dutch. In the mean time those princes never sent their contingent to the Rh