Nothing but experience will form great commanders.

Very few of our countrymen have that experience; and therefore we must for the present employ strangers." Lowther followed on the same side.

"We have had a long peace; and the consequence is that we have not a sufficient supply of officers fit for high commands.

The parks and the camp at Hounslow were very poor military schools, when compared with the fields of battle and the lines of contravallation in which the great commanders of the continental nations have learned their art." In reply to these arguments an orator on the other side was so absurd as to declare that he could point out ten Englishmen who, if they were in the French service, would be made Marshals.

Four or five colonels who had been at Steinkirk took part in the debate.