o have been wary, and timorous where they might
well have been secure. They were not shocked by hearing the same man
maintain, in the same breath, that, if twenty thousand professional
soldiers were kept up, the liberty and property of millions of
Englishmen would be at the mercy of the Crown, and yet that those
millions of Englishmen, fighting for liberty and property, would
speedily annihilate an invading army composed of fifty or sixty thousand
of the conquerors of Steinkirk and Landen. Whoever denied the former
proposition was called a tool of the Court. Whoever denied the latter
was accused of insulting and slandering the nation.

Somers was too wise to oppose himself directly to the strong current
of popular feeling. With rare dexterity he took the tone, not of an
advocate, but of a judge. The danger which seemed so terrible to many
honest friends of liberty he did not venture to pronounce altogether
visionary. But he reminded his countrymen that a choice between dangers
was sometimes all that was left to the wisest of mankind. No lawgiver
had ever been able to devise a perfect and immortal form of government.
Perils lay thick on the right and on the left; and to keep far from one
evil was to draw near to another. That which, considered merely with
reference to the internal polity of England, might be, to a certain
extent, objectionable, might be absolutely essential to her rank among
European Powers, and even to her independence. All that a statesman
could do in such a case was to weigh inconveniences against each other,
and carefully to observe which way the scale leaned. The evil of having
regular soldiers, and the evil of not having them, Somers set forth and
compared in a little treatise, which was once widely renowned as the
Balancing Letter, and which was admitted, even by the malecontents,
to be an able and plausible composition. He well knew that mere names
exercise a mighty influence on the public mind; that the most perfect
tribunal which a legislator could construct would be unpopular if
it were called the Star Chamber; that the most judicious tax which
a financier could devise would excite murmurs if it were called the
Shipmoney; and that the words Standing Army then had to English ears
a sound as unpleasing as either Shipmoney or Star Chamber. He declared
therefore that he abhorred the thought of a standing army. What he
recommended was, not a standing, but a temporary army, an army of which
Parliame