John Trenchard

“ And even in our own Country I believe, some Men now alive can remember the Time, when if the King had but twenty more Places in his Disposal, or disposed of those he had to the best Advantage, the Liberty of England had been at an End. I would not be understood quite to exclude Parliament men from having Places; for a Man may serve his Country in two Capacities: but I would not have it to be a Qualification for a Place, because a poor Borough thinks a Man fit to represent them, that therefore he must be a Statesman, a Lawyer, a Soldier, an Admiral, and what not? ”

“ If this Army does not enslave us, it is barely because we have a virtuous Prince that will not attempt it; and it is a most miserable thing to have no other Security for our Liberty, than the Will of a Man, though the most just Man living: For that is not a free Government where there is a good Prince (for even the most arbitrary Governments have had sometimes a Relaxation of their Miseries) but where it is so constituted, that no one can be a Tyrant if he would. ”

“ I am sorry the Nation is grown so contemptible in these Gentlemens Opinions, as to think that they can remove our fears of a Standing Army by sending them threescore Miles off, from whence they may recall them upon a few Days notice. Nay an Army kept in Ireland, is more dangerous to us than at home: For here by perpetual converse with their Relations and Acquaintance, some few of them perhaps may warp towards their Country; whereas in Ireland they are kept as it were in a Garison, where they are shut up from the communication of their Countrymen, and my be nursed up in another Interest. ”

“ If this Army could commit such violences upon a Parliament always successful, that had acquired so much Reputation both at home and abroad, at a time when the whole People were trained in Arms, and the Pulse of the Nation beat high for Liberty; what are we to expect if in a future Age an ambitious Prince should arise with a dissolute and debauched Army, a flattering Clergy, a prostitute Ministry, a Bankrupt House of L——ds, a Pensioner House of C——ns, and a slavish and corrupted Nation? ”

“ Fourthly, Ludlow's Memoirs, where he will find that an Army raised to defend our Liberties, made Footballs of that Parliament, at whose Actions all Europe stood amazed, and in a few Years set up ten several Sorts of Government contrary to the Genius of the whole Nation, and the Opinion of Half their own Body: Such is the Influence of a General over an Army, that he can make them act like a Piece of Mechanism, whatever their private Opinions are. ”

“ But I wonder what Arguments in Nature our Hirelings will think of for keeping up an Army this Year. Good Reasons lie within a narrow Compass, and might be guessed at; but nonsense is infinite. The Arguments they chiefly insisted upon last year were, That it was uncertain whether the French King would deliver up any of his Towns if we disbanded our Army; that King James had 18000 Men at his devotion kept by the King of France; that a great Fleet was preparing there upon some unknown Design; that the King of Spain was dying; that there was no Militia settled ”

“ If the Prince of Orange in his Declaration, instead of telling us that we should be settled upon such a Foundation that there should be no Danger of our falling again into Slavery, and that he would send back all his Forces as soon as that was done, had promis'd us that after an eight Years War (which should leave us in Debt near twenty Millions) we should have a Standing Army established, a great many of which should be Foreigners, I believe few Men would have thought such a Revolution worth the Hazard of their Lives and Estates ”

“ We have not only our own Experience, but the Example of all Times, to prove that Men in the same Circumstances will do the same Things, call them what Names of Distinction you please. A Government is a mere Piece of Clockwork; and having such Springs and Wheels, must act after such a Manner: And therefore the Art is to constitute it so that it must move to the public Advantage. It is certain that every Man will act for his own Interest ”

“ To conclude, we have a wise and virtuous Prince, who has always endeavour'd to please his People by taking those Men into his Councils, which they have recommended to him by their own Choice; and when their Interest has declin'd, he has gratified the Nation by turning them out. I would therefore give this seasonable Advice to those who were once called Whigs, that the way to preserve their Interest with his Majesty is to keep it with the People; that their old Friends will not desert them till they desert their Country, which when they do, they will be left to their own proper Merits ”

“ They must then never expect to see the House of Commons act vigorously for the Interest either of King or People; but some will servilely comply with the Court to keep their Places, others will oppose it as unreasonably to get them: And those Gentlemen whose Designs are for their Country's Interest, will grow weary of the best Form of Government in the World, thinking by Mistake the Fault is in our Constitution. ”

“ He began a foolish and unjust War with the Dutch; and tho' the Parliament gave him vast Sums to maintain it, yet he spent so much upon his Vices, that they got great advantages of us, and burnt our Fleet at Chatham. At last he made as dishonourable a Peace with them, as he had done a War; perpetual reproach to our Country, that our Reputation at Sea should be sunk to so low an ebb as to be baffled by that Nation, who but a few Years before had sent a blank Paper to the Parliament, to prescribe to them what Laws they pleased. ”

“ Whereas if these Gentlemen design their Army to defend us against a sudden Invasion, or to be in readiness against the King of Spain's Death, in my poor Opinion they should have kept up the private Soldiers, and disbanded all the Officers but such as are just necessary to exercise them; for Officers will be always ready to accept good Employments, whereas the private Soldiers will be very difficultly lifted again in a new War, though we all know they are easily to be got together, when they are only to insult their Countrymen. ”

“ Our Government trusts the King with no Part of the Legislative but a Negative Voice, which is absolutely necessary to preserve the Executive. One Part of the Duty of the House of Commons is to punish Offenders, and redress the Grievances occasion'd by the Executive Part of the Government; and how can that be done if they should happen to be the same Persons, unless they would be publick-spirited enough to bang or drown themselves?
But in my Opinion, in another Thing of no less Importance, we deviated in Charles the Second's Time from our Constitution ”

“ There is nothing in which the Generality of Mankind are so much mistaken as when they talk of Government. The different Effects of it are obvious to every one, but few can trace its Causes. Most Men having indigested Ideas of the Nature of it, attribute all public Miscarriages to the Corruption of Mankind. ”

“ I will venture to say, that if this Army does not make us Slaves, we are the only People upon Earth in such Circumstances that ever escaped it, with the 4th part of their number. It is a greater force than Alexander conquered the East with, than Cæsar had in his Conquest of Gaul, or indeed the whole Roman Empire; double the number that any of our Ancestors ever invaded France with, Agesilaus the Persians, or Huniades and Scanderbeg the Turkish Empire; as many again as was in any battle between the Dutch and Spaniards in forty Years War, or betwixt the King and Parliament in England ”

“ And if we should allow them to be out a fortnight longer than was designed by a last Bill for exercising in lesser Bodies, then the utmost Charge of such a Militia will be no more than to keep up 9000 Men the year round. None of the Parties I mentioned will openly oppose a Militia, though they would be all glad to drop it: And I believe nobody will be so hardy as to deny, but if the Court would shew as much Vigour in prosecuting it, as they did last year to keep up a Standing Army, that a Bill would pass; which they will certainly do if we disband the Army, and they think it necessary ”

“ I would not be here understood to throw the whole Odium of that Matter upon the Court; for there are several other Parties in England, that are not over-zealous for a Militia. First, those who are for restoring King James's trumpery, and would have the Army disbanded, and no Force settled in the room of it. Next there are a mungrel sort of Men who are not direct Enemies to the King, yet because their fancied merit is not rewarded at their own price, they are so shagreen that they will not let him have the Reputation of so noble an Establishment. ”

“ They ansswered, that we had defended ourselves for above a thousand Years without an Army; that a King's truest Strength is the Love of his People; that they would make the Militia useful, and ordered a Bill to be brought in to that Purpose. But all this served only to fulfil their Iniquity; for they had done their own Business before, and now he would keep an Army up in spite of them: So he prorogued them, and called no other Parliament during his reign ”

“ We may add to this, that the King of France has disbanded a great many Men, that his Country now lies open in a great many Places; that the Germans and Dutch keep great Numbers of Men in constant Pay; and in all probability there will be a Peace with the Turks: That Portugal and the Italian Princes must enter into the Confederacy in their own Defence; and that the French will lie under an equal Necessity to raise Forces with a much less Country than in the former War, to oppose such a mighty Union of Princes, who will attack hiim upon the first Attempt he makes upon Spain. ”

“ For their own Interest is so interwoven with the People's, that if they act for themselves (which every one of them will do as near as he can) they must act for the common Interst of England. And if a few among them should find it their Interest to abuse their Power, it will be the Interest of all the rest to punish them for it: and then our Governmene would act mechanically, and a Rogue will as naturally be hang'd as a Clock strike Twelve when the Hour is come. ”

“ I have avoided in this place discoursing of the Nature of Militia's, that Subject having been so fully handled already; only thus much I will observe, that a Standing Army in Peace will grow more effeminate by living dissolutely in Quarters, than a Militia that for the most part will be exercised with hard labour. So that upon the whole matter, a Standing Army in Peace will be worse than a Militia; and in War a Militia will soon become a disciplined Army. ”

“ After this they let the Parliament govern for five Years, who made their Name famous thro' the whole Earth, conquered their Enemies in England, Scotland and Ireland; reduced the Kingdom of Portugal to their own Terms; recovered our Reputation at Sea; overcame the Dutch in several famous Battles, [16] secured our Trade and managed the public Expences with so much frugality, that no Estates were gained by private Men upon the public Miseries; and at last were passing an Act for their own Dissolution, and settling the Nation in a free and impartial Commonwealth ”

“ Most Men at this time of Day, I believe, will agree with me that 'tis not our business to throw Squibs in Flanders, send out vast Sums of Money to have our Men play at bopeep with the French, and at best to have their Brains beat out against stone Walls: But if a War is necessary there, 'tis our Interest to let the Dutch and Germans manage it, which is proper for their Situation, and let our Province be to undertake the Sea ”

“ If any one during the Reign of Charles the Second, when those that were called Whigs, with a noble Spirit of Liberty, both in the Parliament House and in private Companies, opposed a few Guards as Badges of Tyranny, a Destruction to our Constitution, and the Foundations of a Standing Army: I say, if any should have told them that a Deliverer should come and rescue them from the Oppressions under which they then laboured; that France by a tedious and consumptive War should be reduced to half the Power it then had ”

“ Thus we see the King husbanded a few Guards so well, that in a small Number of Years they grew to a formidable Army, notwithstanding all the Endeavours of Parliament to the contrary; so difficult it is to prevent the growing of an Evil, that does not receive a check in the beginning.
He increased the Establishment in Ireland to 7700 Men, Officers included; whereas they never exceeded in any former Reign 2000, when there was more occasion for them: The Irish not long before having been entirely reduced by Cromwell, and could not have held up their Heads again without his Countenance. ”

“ Several Accidents concur to make the disbanding the Army practicable now, which may not happen again. We have a new Parliament, uncorrupted by the Intrigues of the Courtiers: Besides, the Soldiers themselves hitherto have known little but the Fatigues of a War, and have been so paid since, that the private Men would be glad to be disbanded; and the Officers would not be very uneasy at it, considering they are to have half Pay, which we must not expect them hereafter when they have lived in Riot and Luxury. ”

“ It is natural to run from one Extreme to another; and this Policy will at last turn upon any Court that uses it; for if they should be resolv'd to give all Offices to Parliament-men, the People will think themselves under a Necessity to obtain a Law that they should give none, which has been more than once attempted in our own Time. ”

“ One good effect of this Army has already appeared; for I presume every Body has heard how prevailing an Argument it was in the late Elections, That if we choose such a Man, we shall be free from Quarters: And I wish this Argument does not every day grow stronger. Nay, who knows but in another Reign the Corporations may be told that his Majesty expects they will choose the Officers of the Army, and the Parliament be told that he expects they will maintain them? ”

“ He abetted the Irish Massacre, as appears by their producing a Commission under the Great Seal of Scotland, by the Letter of Charles the 2d in favour of the Marquess of Antrim, by his stopping the Succours that the Parliament sent to reduce Ireland six Months under the Walls of Chester, by his entring into a Treaty with the Rebels after he had engaged his Faith to the Parliament to the contrary, and bringing over many thousands of them to fight against his People. It is endless to enumerate all the Oppressions of his Reign ”