On this occasion the Tories, though they felt strongly, wrote but
little. The paper war was almost entirely carried on between two
sections of the Whig party. The combatants on both sides were
generally anonymous. But it was well known that one of the
foremost champions of the malecontent Whigs was John Trenchard,
son of the late Secretary of State. Preeminent among the
ministerial Whigs was one in whom admirable vigour and quickness
of intellect were united to a not less admirable moderation and
urbanity, one who looked on the history of past ages with the eye
of a practical statesman, and on the events which were passing
before him with the eye of a philosophical historian. It was not
necessary for him to name himself. He could be none but Somers.

The pamphleteers who recommended the immediate and entire
disbanding of the army had an easy task. If they were
embarrassed, it was only by the abundance of the matter from
which they had to make their selection. On their side were
claptraps and historical commonplaces without number, the
authority of a crowd of illustrious names, all the prejudices,
all the traditions, of both the parties in the state. These
writers laid it down as a fundamental principle of political
science that a standing army and a free constitution could not
exist together. What, they asked, had destroyed the noble
commonwealths of Greece? What had enslaved the mighty Roman
people? What had turned the Italian republics of the middle ages
into lordships and duchies? How was it that so many of the
kingdoms of modern Europe had been transformed from limited into
absolute monarchies? The States General of France, the Cortes of
Castile, the Grand Justiciary of Arragon, what had been fatal to