12

HISTORY OP ENGLAND.

CIUP.

XX11I.

JC97.

to have no'garrison except the trainbands of the TowerHamlets.

It must be evident to every intelligent and dispassionateman that these declaimers contradicted themselves. If anarmy composed of regular troops really was far more effi-cient than an army composed of husbandmen taken fromthe plough and burghers taken from the counter, how couldthe country be safe ivith no defenders but husbandmen andburghers, when a great prince, who was our nearest neigh-bour, who had a few months before been our enemy, andwho might, in a few months, be our enemy again, kept upnot less than a hundred and fifty thousand regular troops?If, on the other hand, the spirit of the English people wassuch that they would, with little or no training, encounterand defeat the most formidable array of veterans from thecontinent, was it not absurd to apprehend that such apeople could be reduced to slavery by a few regiments oftheir own countrymen? But our ancestors were generallyso much blinded by prejudice that this inconsistencypassed unnoticed. They were secure where they ought tohave been wary, and timorous where they might well havebeen secure. They were not shocked by hearing the sameman maintain, in the same breath, that, if twenty thousandprofessional soldiers were kept up, the liberty and pro-perty of millions of Englishmen would be at the mercy ofthe Crown, and yet that those millions of Englishmen,fighting for liberty and property, would speedily annhhilate an invading army composed of fifty or sixty