ce far larger than that which James
collected in the camp at Hounslow for the purpose of overawing his
capital be constantly kept up within the kingdom. The old national
antipathy to permanent military establishments, an antipathy which was
once reasonable and salutary, but which lasted some time after it
had become unreasonable and noxious, has gradually yielded to the
irresistible force of circumstances. We have made the discovery, that
an army may be so constituted as to be in the highest degree efficient
against an enemy, and yet obsequious to the civil magistrate. We have
long ceased to apprehend danger to law and to freedom from the license
of troops, and from the ambition of victorious generals. An alarmist who
should now talk such language, as was common five generations ago, who
should call for the entire disbanding of the land force; of the realm,
and who should gravely predict that the warriors of Inkerman and Delhi
would depose the Queen, dissolve the Parliament, and plunder the Bank,
would be regarded as fit only for a cell in Saint Luke's. But before the
Revolution our ancestors had known a standing army only as an instrument
of lawless power. Judging by their own experience, they thought it
impossible that such an army should exist without danger to the rights
both of the Crown and of the people. One class of politicians was never
weary of repeating that an Apostolic Church, a loyal gentry, an ancient
nobility, a sainted King, had been foully outraged by the Joyces and the
Prides; another class recounted the atrocities committed by the Lambs of
Kirke, and by the Beelzebubs and Lucifers of Dundee; and both classes,
agreeing in scarcely any thing else, were disposed to agree in aversion
to the red coats.

While such was the feeling of the nation, the King was, both as a
statesman and as a general, most unwilling to see that superb body
of troops which he had formed with infinite difficulty broken up and
dispersed. But, as to this matter, he could not absolutely rely on the
support of his ministers; nor could his ministers absolutely rely on the
support of that parliamentary majority whose attachment had enabled them
to confront enemies abroad and to crush traitors at home, to restore
a debased currency, and to fix public credit on deep and solid
foundations.

The difficulties of the King's situation are to be, in part at least,
attributed to an error which he had committed in the preceding spring.
The Gaz