to be in the highest degree efficient against an enemy, and yet
obsequious to the civil magistrate. We have long ceased to
apprehend danger to law and to freedom from the license of
troops, and from the ambition of victorious generals. An alarmist
who should now talk such language, as was common five generations
ago, who should call for the entire disbanding of the land force;
of the realm, and who should gravely predict that the warriors of
Inkerman and Delhi would depose the Queen, dissolve the
Parliament, and plunder the Bank, would be regarded as fit only
for a cell in Saint Luke's. But before the Revolution our
ancestors had known a standing army only as an instrument of
lawless power. Judging by their own experience, they thought it
impossible that such an army should exist without danger to the
rights both of the Crown and of the people. One class of
politicians was never weary of repeating that an Apostolic
Church, a loyal gentry, an ancient nobility, a sainted King, had
been foully outraged by the Joyces and the Prides; another class
recounted the atrocities committed by the Lambs of Kirke, and by
the Beelzebubs and Lucifers of Dundee; and both classes, agreeing
in scarcely any thing else, were disposcd to agree in aversion to
the red coats.

While such was the feeling of the nation, the King was, both as a
statesman and as a general, most unwilling to see that superb body
of troops which he had formed with infinite difficulty broken up
and dispersed. But, as to this matter, he could not absolutely
rely on the support of his ministers; nor could his ministers
absolutely rely on the support of that parliamentary majority
whose attachment had enabled them to confront enemies abroad and
to crush traitors at home, to restore a debased currency, and to