Rights. It was therefore impossible for William, now that the
country was threatened by no foreign and no domestic enemy, to
keep up even a single battalion without the sanction of the
Estates of the Realm; and it might well be doubted whether such a
sanction would be given.

It is not easy for us to see this question in the light in which
it appeared to our ancestors.

No man of sense has, in our days, or in the days of our fathers,
seriously maintained that our island could be safe without an
army. And, even if our island were perfectly secure from attack,
an army would still be indispensably necessary to us. The growth
of the empire has left us no choice. The regions which we have
colonized or conquered since the accession of the House of
Hanover contain a population exceeding twenty-fold that which the
House of Stuart governed. There are now more English soldiers on
the other side of the tropic of Cancer in time of peace than
Cromwell had under his command in time of war. All the troops of
Charles II. would not have been sufficient to garrison the posts
which we now occupy in the Mediterranean Sea alone. The regiments
which defend the remote dependencies of the Crown cannot be duly
recruited and relieved, unless a force 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