l had only deepened under James; but with the
Continental war the existence of an army was a necessity. As yet however
it was a force which had no legal existence. The soldier was simply an
ordinary subject; there were no legal means of punishing strictly
military offences or of providing for military discipline: and the
assumed power of billeting soldiers in private houses had been taken
away by the law. The difficulty both of Parliament and the army was met
by a Mutiny Act. The powers requisite for discipline in the army were
conferred by Parliament on its officers, and provision was made for the
pay of the force, but both pay and disciplinary powers were granted only
for a single year.

[Sidenote: Parliament and the Revolution.]

The Mutiny Act, like the grant of supplies, has remained annual ever
since the Revolution; and as it is impossible for the State to exist
without supplies or for the army to exist without discipline and pay the
annual assembly of Parliament has become a matter of absolute necessity.
The greatest constitutional change which our history has witnessed was
thus brought about in an indirect but perfectly efficient way. The
dangers which experience had lately shown lay in the Parliament itself
were met with far less skill. Under Charles the Second England had seen
a Parliament, which had been returned in a moment of reaction,
maintained without fresh election for eighteen years. A Triennial Bill
which limited the duration of a Parliament to three was passed with
little opposition, but fell before the dislike and veto of William. To
counteract the influence which a king might obtain by crowding the
Commons with officials proved a yet harder task. A Place Bill, which
excluded all persons in the employment of the State from a seat in
Parliament, was defeated, and wisely defeated, in the Lords. The modern
course of providing against a pressure from the Court or the
administration by excluding all minor officials, but of preserving the
hold of Parliament over the great officers of State by admitting them
into its body, seems as yet to have occurred to nobody. It is equally
strange that while vindicating its right of Parliamentary control over
the public revenue and the army the Bill of Rights should have left by
its silence the control of trade to the Crown. It was only a few years
later, in the discussions on the charter granted to the East India
Company, that the Houses silently claimed and obtained