by nursery
tales. We were at peace; and, even in time of war, an enemy who should
attempt to invade us would probably be intercepted by our fleet, and
would assuredly, if he reached our shores, be repelled by our militia.
Some people indeed talked as if a militia could achieve nothing great.
But that base doctrine was refuted by all ancient and all modern
history. What was the Lacedaemonian phalanx in the best days of
Lacedaemon? What was, the Roman legion in the best days of Rome? What
were the armies which conquered at Cressy, at Poitiers, at Agincourt,
at Halidon, or at Flodden? What was that mighty array which Elizabeth
reviewed at Tilbury? In the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth
centuries Englishmen who did not live by the trade of war had made war
with success and glory. Were the English of the seventeenth century so
degenerate that they could not be trusted to play the men for their own
homesteads and parish churches?

For such reasons as these the disbanding of the forces was strongly
recommended. Parliament, it was said, might perhaps, from respect and
tenderness for the person of His Majesty, permit him to have guards
enough to escort his coach and to pace the rounds before his palace. But
this was the very utmost that it would be right to concede. The defence
of the realm ought to be confided to the sailors and the militia. Even
the Tower ought to have no garrison except the trainbands of the Tower
Hamlets.

It must be evident to every intelligent and dispassionate man that
these declaimers contradicted themselves. If an army composed of regular
troops really was far more efficient than an army composed of husbandmen
taken from the plough and burghers taken from the counter, how could the
country be safe with no defenders but husbandmen and burghers, when a
great prince, who was our nearest neighbour, who had a few months before
been our enemy, and who might, in a few months, be our enemy again, kept
up not less than a hundred and fifty thousand regular troops? If, on the
other hand, the spirit of the English people was such that they would,
with little or no training, encounter and defeat the most formidable
array of veterans from the continent, was it not absurd to apprehend
that such a people could be reduced to slavery by a few regiments of
their own countrymen? But our ancestors were generally so much blinded
by prejudice that this inconsistency passed unnoticed. They were secure
where they ought t