[Kalimac]

I'm probably not saying anything that hasn't been expressed already but here's the 2 cents anyway. Merry and Pippin, far from being a hindrance, might have been a little too much of a help. Granted that they weren't nearly as "grown up" at Parth Galen as they were later on, they were still much more hardened and experienced than they were in the beginning, when they were doing things like deliberately wandering into the Old Forest, almost getting snarfed up by the Barrow-Wight, etc. You're right that since they're social equals to Frodo, they would have felt more authority to second-guess him than Sam did (all those doubts that Sam thinks but does not express might have become pitched battles, probably between Merry and Frodo). And it's very easy to see Merry and Pippin doing several very helpful-at-the-time things that would have plunged all of them into disaster; for example, going off on their own to hunt for extra food (hey, they're running out, aren't they?), attacking Faramir in defense of Frodo instead of keeping cool, killing Gollum (to protect Frodo from him) and, God help us all, maybe even wrenching the Ring from Frodo somewhere along the line (because they could see what it was doing to him and refused to see him endure it any longer). None of these things would be motivated by ill-will, and all of them would have been the right things to do according to the mores of the Shire, but as for what the end would have been....quite. Ultimately they were much better off where they were, even though while Pippin was watching the cloud lower and Merry was confronting the Witch-King neither one would have shared our opinion of the matter.