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English liberty was completely triumphant. As incident to the undefined
power of making war, an acknowledged prerogative of the crown, Charles
II. had, by his own authority, kept on foot in time of peace a body of
5,000 regular troops. And this number James II. increased to 30,000;
who were paid out of his civil list. At the revolution, to abolish the
exercise of so dangerous an authority, it became an article of the Bill
of Rights then framed, that "the raising or keeping a standing army
within the kingdom in time of peace, UNLESS WITH THE CONSENT OF
PARLIAMENT, was against law."

In that kingdom, when the pulse of liberty was at its highest pitch, no
security against the danger of standing armies was thought requisite,
beyond a prohibition of their being raised or kept up by the mere
authority of the executive magistrate. The patriots, who effected that
memorable revolution, were too temperate, too wellinformed, to think
of any restraint on the legislative discretion. They were aware that a
certain number of troops for guards and garrisons were indispensable;
that no precise bounds could be set to the national exigencies; that a
power equal to every possible contingency must exist somewhere in the
government: and that when they referred the exercise of that power to
the judgment of the legislature, they had arrived at the ultimate point
of precaution which was reconcilable with the safety of the community.

From the same source, the people of America may be said to have derived
an hereditary impression of danger to liberty, from standing armies in
time of peace. The circumstances of a revolution quickened the public
sensibility on every point connected with the security of popular
rights, and in some instances raise the warmth of our zeal beyond the
degree which consisted with the due temperature of the body politic.
The attempts of two of the States to restrict the authority of the
legislature in the article of military establishments, are of the number
of these instances. The principles which had taught us to be jealous
of the power of an hereditary monarch were by an injudicious excess
extended to the representatives of the people in their popular
assemblies. Even in some of the States, where this error was not
adopted, we find unnecessary declarations that standing armies ought not
to be kept up, in time of peace, WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF THE LEGISLATURE.
I call them unnecessary, because the reason which had in