in time of peace could only be inflicted by order of the civil magistrate. The great part which this conflict had in preparing the Revolution is well known; and an article of the Bill of Rights expressly provided that, without the consent of Parliament, the raising or keeping of a standing army within the kingdom was illegal. It soon, however, became evident to all sagacious observers that a considerable army was indispensable if England were ever to engage in a land war with Continental nations. The French army, which under Henry IV. consisted of 14,000 men, amounted, after the Peace of Nimegue, to no less than 140,000; 1 and before the close of his reign Lewis XIV. is said to have had as many as 360,000 men at one time under arms. The Emperor Charles VI. employed 170,000 soldiers in the war of 1733. The Prussian army, on the accession of Frederick the Great, consisted of 76,000 men; and every petty German ruler was augmenting his forces. The genius of Parma, Turenne, Condé, and Vauban transformed the art of war, and every improvement made a hastily levied militia more helpless before a disciplined army. Vauban and Cohorn may almost be said to have created the art of attacking and defending fortresses. Mining acquired a prominence in warfare, and was conducted with a skill formerly utterly unknown. Transportable copper pontoons for crossing rivers were invented by the French in 1672. The invention of the fixed bayonet has been attributed both to Mackay and to Vauban; and the Prussian infantry attained a perfection in manoeuvring and a rapidity in firing which made every battalion a walking battery, and was speedily copied in the rest of Europe.2

All these changes, by giving a new perfection to the art of war, made it evident that the time had arrived when a considerable permanent body of highly trained soldiers was necessary for the security of the State; and that necessity in England was still more felt on account of the perpetual fear of a Jacobite insurrection. But a permanent army could not exist unless adequate means were provided for preserving its discipline, especially at a time when the dispositions of the troops were

'Heeren.

2 Frederick II., Mémoires de mon Temps. See, too, for other military

statistics, Ranke's Hist. of Prussia, i, 420-421. Lord Hervey's Memoirs, i. 86.

doubtful or divided. The declaration of 800 soldiers at Ipswich in favour of James in 1689 produced the first Mutiny Act, which was enacted for six months, and which enabled courts-martial to punish mutiny and desertion by death. The press-gang soon came into use, and it was much employed in time of war as a kind of irregular police; suspected criminals, or notorious bad characters, against whom no definite charge could be proved, being in this manner draughted in great numbers into the army. An Act of Anne gave justices of the peace express power to levy as soldiers such able-bodied men in their districts as had 'no lawful calling or employment, or visible means for their maintenance or livelihood.' 2

There are few more curious pages in English history than the slow and gradual change of public opinion on the subject of standing armies. For more than half a century the battle continued with almost unabated violence, and a century had elapsed before it altogether subsided. The Mutiny Act was regarded as a purely temporary contrivance, but it was soon felt by most experienced men that it was impossible to govern the army if military insubordination or desertion were treated as mere breaches of contract, and were punishable only by the civil courts. The Mutiny Act was accordingly re-enacted, sometimes for six months, more frequently for a year, but it was long before it was recognised as permanently necessary. In the reigns of William and Anne there were several periods-one of them lasting for more than two years-in which it was not in force, and its invariable enactment dates only from George I. Its opponents dwelt upon the danger of severing by a special code of laws the members of the army from their fellow citizens, and of tampering with the great constitutional principle that the civil magistrate in time of peace should have sole jurisdiction for the suppression of crime; and they urged that to permit the sovereign, of his own authority, to establish articles of war, and erect courts-martial for enforcing them, was to vest a sole legislative power in the Crown. On these grounds Windham and Shippen, at the head of the Tory party, strenuously opposed the Mutiny Act. Walpole took the same course, when he was in opposition to Stanhope, and his saying that he who gives the power Macaulay's Hist. 2 3 & 4 Anne, ch. 11.

of blood gives blood' was continually quoted by its opponents. In 1717 the power of inflicting capital punishment by sentence of courtmartial on deserters and mutineers was only carried by 247 to 229,' and most of the extensions which the Act underwent were fiercely contested. The Act of 1689 provided only for the punishment of mutiny and desertion, without exempting any officer or soldier from the ordinary processes of law, and its operation was restricted to the regular army and to England. The scope of the Act was gradually extended to Jersey and Guernsey, to Ireland, and at length to the whole dominion of the Crown. The Mutiny Act of 1713, which was the first passed in time of peace, gave courts-martial no power to award a capital sentence, and this incapacity continued till the rebellion of 1715. Under George I. the Crown for the first time obtained an express and formal authority to constitute, under royal sign manual, articles of war for the government of the army, and to enforce their penalties by courts-martial. The articles of war of 1717 made provision for the trial of ordinary civil offences by courts martial, and the Mutiny Act declared that acquittal or conviction should be a bar to all further indictment for the same offence. In 1728, however, a question arose whether the articles of war which emanated from the sovereign alone, could create capital offences unknown to the law, and the Attorney-General advised the Government that while the power of inflicting other penalties by those articles was unrestricted, no sentence extending to life or limb could be imposed by court-martial except for offences enumerated in, and made so punishable by, the Mutiny Act; and a clause to this effect has been inserted in every Mutiny Act since 1748. In 1748, too, an oath of secrecy was first imposed upon the members of courts-martial forbidding them to divulge the sentence till approved, or the votes of any member unless required by Parliament. The position of half-pay officers was long and vehemently discussed. It was contended by the Government that they were subject to the Mutiny Act, but the opinions of the judges were divided on the question. A special clause making them liable was inserted in the Act of 1747, but it was withdrawn in 1749, and in 1785 their exemption was decided. In 1754 the operation of the Mutiny Act was extended

See the remarkable account of the debate in Tindal.

to the troops of the East India Company serving in India, and to the king's troops serving in North America, as well as to local troops serving with them. In 1756 the militia, when called out for active service, were brought under its provisions; and in 1788, in spite of the strong opposition of Fox and Sheridan, the corps of sappers and miners was included in the same category.1

2

The extreme distrust with which this department of legislation was regarded is shown by the strong opposition that was aroused over almost all the questions I have enumerated. The first volume of the Commentaries of Blackstone was published as late as 1765, and it is remarkable that even at this date that great lawyer spoke with the strongest apprehension of the dangers to liberty arising from the Mutiny Act. He maintained that the condition of the army was that of absolute servitude; and he argued that every free and prudent nation should endeavour to prevent the introduction of slavery into the midst of it; that if it has unhappily been introduced, arms should at least never be placed in the hands of the slaves, and that no policy could be more suicidal than to deprive of the liberties of the constitution the very men who are at the last resort entrusted with their defence. But whatever plausibility there may be in such reasoning, it will now hardly be disputed that a body of many thousands of armed men, whose prompt and unreasoning obedience is of the utmost moment to the State, cannot be permanently governed by the mild and tardy processes of law which are applicable to civilians. Military insubordination is so grave and, at the same time, so contagious a disease, that it requires the promptest and most decisive remedies to prevent it from leading to anarchy. By retaining a strict control over the pay and over the numbers of the soldiers, by limiting each Mutiny Act to a single year, and by entrusting its carriage through the House to a civil minister, who is responsible for its provisions, Parliament has very effectually guarded against abuses; and the army, since the days of the Commonwealth, has never been inimical to the liberties of England.

1 See, for the origin of the Mutiny Act, Macaulay's Hist. of England, ch. xi., and for its subsequent history,

Clode's Military Forces of the Crown, vol. i.

Blackstone, book i. ch. 13.

The jealousy that was felt about the Mutiny Act extended to other parts of military administration. After the Peace of Ryswick, Parliament insisted on reducing the forces to 10,000 men, or about a third part of what William considered necessary for the security of the State; and during the greater part of the first two Hanoverian reigns there was an annual conflict about the number of the forces. In 1717 Walpole himself, being at this time in Opposition, was prominent in urging their reduction from 16,000 to 12,000 men. During his own administration the army in time of peace was usually about 17,000 men. The terror which was produced by the Scotch invasion of 1745, the frequent alarms of a French invasion, the popularity of the wars of the elder Pitt, and the great extension of the empire resulting from his conquests, gradually led to increased armaments; nor was the growth of the regular army seriously checked by the organisation, between 1757 and 1763, of a national militia. In the early years of the eighteenth century the number of soldiers in Parliament was much complained of, and some unsuccessful efforts were made to diminish it.' Walpole desired to avail himself of the military as of other forms of patronage for the purpose of gratifying his supporters and thus securing his parliamentary majority; but George II., to his great credit, steadily refused to allow the army to be dragged into the vortex of corruption,2 though he consented to deprive the

1 In 1741 some members of the House of Lords drew up a very remarkable protest on this subject. After complaining of the increase of the army, and of the formation of new corps, they say: 'We apprehend that this method of augmentation by new corps may be attended with consequences fatal in time to our Constitution, by increasing the number of commissions which may be disposed of with regard to parliamentary influence only... Our distrust of the motives of this augmentation which creates at once 370 officers... ought to be the greater so near the election of a new parliament ... and we cannot forget that an augmentation of 8,040 men was likewise made the very year of the election of the present Parliament. The number of officers in Parliament has gradually increased, and though

we think the gentlemen of the army as little liable to undue influence as any other body of men, yet we think it would be very imprudent to trust the very fundamentals of our Constitution, the independency of Parliaments, to the uncertain effects of ministerial favour or resentment.'Rogers's Protests of the Lords, ii. 1–6.

2 Walpole himself complained to Lord Hervey, 'How many people there are I could bind to me by getting things done in the army you may imagine, and that I never can get any one thing done in it you perhaps will not believe; but it is as true as that there is an army, that I never ask for the smallest commission by which a Member of Parliament may be immediately or collaterally obliged, that the King's answer is not-"I won't do that; you want always to