dined would be in a state in which he could not safely be trusted
with the lives of his fellow creatures. With this amendment, the
first and most concise of our many Mutiny Bills was sent up to
the Lords, and was, in a few hours, hurried by them through all
its stages and passed by the King.48

Thus was made, without one dissentient voice in Parliament,
without one murmur in the nation, the first step towards a change
which had become necessary to the safety of the state, yet which
every party in the state then regarded with extreme dread and
aversion. Six months passed; and still the public danger
continued. The power necessary to the maintenance of military
discipline was a second time entrusted to the crown for a short
term. The trust again expired, and was again renewed. By slow
degrees familiarity reconciled the public mind to the names, once
so odious, of standing army and court martial. It was proved by
experience that, in a well constituted society, professional
soldiers may be terrible to a foreign enemy, and yet submissive
to the civil power. What had been at first tolerated as the
exception began to be considered as the rule. Not a session
passed without a Mutiny Bill. When at length it became evident
that a political change of the highest importance was taking
place in such a manner as almost to escape notice, a clamour was
raised by some factious men desirous to weaken the hands of the
government, and by some respectable men who felt an honest but
injudicious reverence for every old constitutional tradition, and
who were unable to understand that what at one stage in the
progress of society is pernicious may at another stage be
indispensable. This clamour however, as years rolled on, became
fainter and fainter. The debate which recurred every spring on