Among the questions which it was necessary that the Houses should speedily decide, one stood forth preeminent in interest and importance.  Even in the first transports of joy with which the bearer of the treaty of Ryswick had been welcomed to England, men had eagerly and anxiously asked one another what was to be done with that army which had been formed in Ireland and Belgium, which had learned, in many hard campaigns, to obey and to conquer, and which now consisted of eighty-seven thousand excellent soldiers.  Was any part of this great force to be retained in the service of the State?  And, if any part, what part?  The last two kings had, without the consent of the legislature, maintained military establishments in time of peace.  But that they had done this in violation of the fundamental laws of England was acknowledged by all jurists, and had been expressly affirmed in the Bill of 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 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;