of a standing army. There was scarcely a public man of note who
had not often avowed his conviction that our polity and a
standing army could not exist together. The Whigs had been in the
constant habit of repeating that standing armies had destroyed
the free institutions of the neighbouring nations. The Tories had
repeated as constantly that, in our own island, a standing army
had subverted the Church, oppressed the gentry, and murdered the
King. No leader of either party could, without laying himself
open to the charge of gross inconsistency, propose that such an
army should henceforth be one of the permanent establishments of
the realm. The mutiny at Ipswich, and the panic which that mutiny
produced, made it easy to effect what would otherwise have been
in the highest degree difficult. A short bill was brought in
which began by declaring, in explicit terms, that standing armies
and courts martial were unknown to the law of England. It was
then enacted that, on account of the extreme perils impending at
that moment over the state, no man mustered on pay in the service
of the crown should, on pain of death, or of such lighter
punishment as a court martial should deem sufficient, desert his
colours or mutiny against his commanding officers. This statute
was to be in force only six months; and many of those who voted
for it probably believed that it would, at the close of that
period, be suffered to expire. The bill passed rapidly and
easily. Not a single division was taken upon it in the House of
Commons. A mitigating clause indeed, which illustrates somewhat
curiously the manners of that age, was added by way of rider
after the third reading. This clause provided that no court
martial should pass sentence of death except between the hours of
six in the morning and one in the afternoon. The dinner hour was
then early; and it was but too probable that a gentleman who had