e Government the lasting support of a standing army, and thus prevented
that ruinous prostration of the executive before the burst of popular
passion, which had so often induced the most dreadful disorders in English
history. After 1688, the standing army, though inconsiderable compared
with what it has since become, was always respectable, and adequate, as
the result of the rebellions in 1715 and 1745 demonstrated, to the defence
of Government against the most serious domestic dangers. That of itself
was an incalculable blessing, and cheaply purchased by the national debt
and all the bloodshed of our foreign wars. Had Charles I. possessed five
thousand guards, he would at once have crushed the great Rebellion; and
the woful oppression of the Long Parliament, which, during the eleven
years that it sat, extorted eighty millions, equal to two hundred millions
at this time, from an impoverished and bleeding nation, would have been
prevented.

Englishmen are not accustomed to pride themselves upon the external
successes and military triumphs of the eighteenth century; and they have
been so eclipsed by those of the Revolutionary war, that they are now in a
great measure thrown into the shade. Yet nothing is more certain than that
it is in external success and warlike glory, that, during the seventy
years which immediately succeeded the Revolution, we must look for the
chief rewards and best vindication of that convulsion. England then took
its appropriate place as the head of the Protestant faith, the bulwark of
the liberties of Europe. The ambition of the House of Bourbon, which so
nearly proved fatal to them in the person of Louis XIV., became the
lasting object of their apprehension and resistance. The heroic steadiness
of William, the consummate genius of Marlborough, the ardent spirit of
Chatham, won for us the glories of the War of the Succession and of the
Seven Years. Though deeply checkered, especially in the American war, with
disaster, the eighteenth century was, upon the whole, one of external
glory and national advancement. To their honour be it spoken, the Whigs at
that period were the party who had the national glory and success at
heart, and made the greatest efforts, both on the theatre of arms and of
diplomacy, to promote it. The Tories were lukewarm or indifferent to
national glory, averse to foreign alliances, and often willing to purchase
peace by the abandonment of the chief advantages which war had purch