46

mSXOBY OF ENGLAND.

CIIAP.

XI.

J669.

Thus was made, without one dissentient voice in Parliament,without one murmur in the nation, the first step towards achange which had become necessary to the safety of the state,yet which every party in the state then regarded with extremedread and aversion. Six months passed; and still the publicdanger continued. The power necessary to the maintenance ofmilitary discipline was a second time entrusted to the crown fora short term. The trust again expired, and was again renewed.By slow degrees familiarity reconciled the public mind to thenames, once so odious, of standing army and court martial. Itwas proved by experience that, in a well constituted society,professional soldiers may be terrible to a foreign enemy, andyet submissive to the civil power. What had been at first tolera-ted as the exception began to be considered as the rule. Nota session passed without a Mutiny Bill. When at length it be-came evident that a political change of the highest importancewas taking place in such a manner as almost to escape notice, aclamour was raised by some factious men desirous to weakenthe hands of the government, and by some respectable men whofelt an honest but injudicious reverence for every old constitu-tional tradition, and who were unable to understand that whatat one stage in the progress of society is pernicious may at an-other stage be indispensable. This clamour how’ever, as yearsrolled on, became fainter and fainter. The debate which recur-red every spring on the Mutiny Bill came to be regarded merelyas an occasion on which hopeful young orators fresh fromChristchurch were to deliver maiden speeches, setting forthhow the guards of Pisistratus seized the citadel of Athens, andhow r the Pimtorian cohorts sold the Roman empire to Didius.At length these declamations became too ridiculous to be re-peated. The most oldfashioned, the most eccentric, politiciancould hardly, in the reign of George the Third, contend thatthere ought to be no regular soldiers, or that the ordinary law,