its possessor is not slow to use it. In stating the operation of
this system we are not left to inference. As France, according to
Sir Thomas More, shows "how dangerous it is to feed such beasts,"
so does Prussia, in ever-memorable instance, which speaks now with
more than ordinary authority, show precisely how the Standing Army
may become the incentive to war. Frederick, the warrior king, is
our witness. With honesty or impudence beyond parallel, he did not
hesitate to record in his Memoirs, among the reasons for his war
upon Maria Theresa, that, on coming to the throne, he found
himself with "troops always ready to act." Voltaire, when called
to revise the royal memoirs, erased this confession, but preserved
a copy;[Footnote: Brougham, Lives of Men of Letters, (London and
Glasgow, 1856,) p. 59,--_Voltaire_. See also Voltaire, _Memoires
pour servir a la Vie de, ecrits par lui-meme, (edit/ 1784-89,)
Tom. LXX. p. 279; also Frederic II., _Histoire de mini Temps_,
OEuvres Posthumes, (Berlin, 1789,) Tom. I. Part. I. p. 78.]
so that by his literary activity we have this kingly authority
for the mischief from a Standing Army. How complete a weapon
was that army may be learned from Lafayette, who, in a letter
to Washington, in 1786, after a visit to the King, described it thus:---

"Nothing can be compared to the beauty of the troops, to the
discipline which reigns in all their ranks, to the simplicity of
their movements, to the uniformity of their regiments..... All the
situations which can be supposed in war, all the movements which
these must necessitate, have been by constant habit so inculcated
in their heads, that all these operations are done almost
mechanically." [Footnote: Memoires, Tom. II. p. 133.]

Nothing better has been devised since the Macedonian phalanx or