Regimen

“ Even now, where the military organization has been kept in vigor by military activities, as in France, we are shown, by the peremptory control of journals and suppression of meetings, by the regimental uniformity of education, by the official administration of the fine arts, the way in which its characteristic regulating system ramifies everywhere. ”

“ States that make war their chief object, he says, assume a certain type of organisation, involving the growth of the warrior class and the treatment of labourers as existing solely to sustain the warriors; the complete subordination of individuals to the will of the despotic soldier-king, their property, liberty and life being at the service of the State; the regimentation of society not only for military but also for civil purposes ”

“ In the third place, and chiefly, the effect in question is produced by the conspicuous and perpetual experience of personal agency which the militant régime yields. In the army, from the commander-in-chief down to the private undergoing drill, every movement is directed by a superior; and, throughout the society, in proportion as its regimentation is elaborate, things are hourly seen to go thus or thus, according to the regulating wills of the ruler and his subordinates. ”

“ Do not be deceived by the outside appearance of order in our plutocratic society. It fares with it as it does with the older forms of war, that there is an outside look of quiet wonderful order about it; how neat and comforting the steady march of the regiment; how quiet and respectable the sergeants look; how clean the polished cannon; neat as a new pin are the storehouses of murder; the books of adjutant and sergeant as innocent-looking as may be; nay, the very orders for destruction and plunder are given with a quiet precision which seems the very token of a good conscience; ”

“ On the other hand, it is an elaborate web of regulations—legal, ecclesiastical, economic—which is to-day quite out of relation to our impulses. On the one hand, it is a force which springs from within; on the other hand, it is a force which presses on us from without. ”

“ Which is the best, a regular military government, or the quiet, humane exercise of just so much authority as the case demands, by the master, who has every motive, human and divine, to exercise humanity and protect his slave from injustice and injury? ”

“ In other words, the ruler, the warrior, and the craftsman, are, according to him, the analogues of our reflective, volitional, and emotional powers. Now even were there truth in the implied assumption of a parallelism between the structure of a society and that of a man, this classification would be indefensible. It might more truly be contended that, as the military power obeys the commands of the Government, it is the Government which answers to the Will; while the military power is simply an agency set in motion by it. ”

“ The suppression, for instance, of anarchy and resistance to law—the complete establishment of the authority of the central government, in a state of society like that of Europe in the Middle Ages—is one of the strongest interests of the people, and also of the rulers simply because they are the rulers ”

“ For government, let it be in the hands of one, assisted with some counsel; and let them have commission to exercise martial laws, with some limitation; and, above all, let men make that profit of being in the wilderness, as they have God always, and his service, before their eyes. ”

“ The establishment of the army, my lords, is an innovation, and, as the noble lord has justly represented it, an innovation that threatens nothing less than the destruction of our liberties, and the dissolution of our government. ”

“ We have enumerated some of the heads under which a people, as they emerge from barbarity, may come to be classed. Such are, the nobility, the people, the adherents of the prince; and even the priesthood have not been forgotten; when we arrive at times of refinement, the army must be joined to the list. The departments of civil government and of war being severed, and the pre-eminence being given to the statesman, the ambitious will naturally devolve the military service on those who are contented with a subordinate station. ”

“ Every where the civil power is inadequate to the preservation of order, the [Pg 406] enforcement of obedience to the king and the laws, and every where a standing army under some form or other presides over the opinions and actions of the people. ”

“ The only government that I recognize—and it matters not how few are at the head of it, or how small its army—is that power that establishes justice in the land, never that which establishes injustice. ”

“ For when men, by entering into society and civil government, have excluded force, and introduced laws for the preservation of property, peace, and unity, among themselves; those who set up force again, in opposition to the laws, do rebellare, that is, do bring back again the state of war, and are properly, rebels,’ as the author shows. ”

“ It has been thought and said by men of optimistic temper, that force as an instrument for the coercion of mankind is merely a temporary and provisional incident in the development of a perfect civilisation. We may well believe, indeed, that with the progress of civilisation we shall see the gradual cessation of the actual exercise of force, whether by way of the administration of justice or by way of war. ”

“ General orders are given out from a centre to the foreman of every hundred, as to the sergeants of an army, and the whole nation is thrown into energetic action, in the same direction in one instance and as one man, and becomes absolutely irresistible. ”

“ Let us be governed by the known laws of the land, and let all things be kept in their proper channels; and let the Army be so governed that the world may never hear of them unless there be occasion to fight. ”

“ They are to take the vows of poverty and chastity, and obedience to the General whom they set over themselves, in all things which concern the observance of their Rule.
The power granted to the General is unprecedented in its extent. The right of command belongs to him entirely. ”

“ The chief reason, my lords, of the danger arising from a standing army, may be ascribed to the circumstances by which men, subject to military laws, are distinguished from other members of the same community; they are, by the nature of martial government, exposed to punishment which other men never incur, and tried by forms of a different and more rigorous kind than those which are practised by the civil power. ”

“ Law in its outward character consists of a body of commands addressed to individual members of the human race forming the component elements of a state. The issuing of commands involves the possibility of obedience or of disobedience, and therein supposes the presence of will, of liberty of action, and of the amount of intelligence needed to understand the purport of the commands. ”

“ On the other hand, in societies compounded and consolidated by militancy which have acquired the militant type of structure, we find political and social life conspicuously characterized by servile obeisances. If we ask in what slightly-developed societies occur the groveling prostrations and creepings and crawlings before superiors, the answer is clear. ”

“ Is it not the desire for order and the respect for order, the sense that there must be a curb on the impulses and passions of individuals, some law duly enforced, some means of checking violence and of protecting life and property against physical force? ”

“ Virginia interrupted.
“I am assuming only the facts of modern life: that force still rules the world; that government is force; that there are two forms of government and only two, and that they are irreconcilable—government by the people and government of the people by imperial masters. ”

“ In fact, in a country without not only bolts and bars, but any effective system of law and government, this Spartan severity of discipline seemed the only security against the most frightful disorder. ”

“ There are again other branches of government among the several nations, or States in the nations, as well as in this nation; there is martial law and civil law; also the governments of cities acting under the directions of the authorities or legislators of the nations or of this nation; to whom certain rights, immunities and privileges are given in the shape of municipal regulations or of charters. ”

“ A government which breathes a martial spirit under a thin appearance of civil polity, presents but a barren subject to the consideration of the inquirer. When the sabre is changed into the sceptre, the science of legislation is short, simple, and decisive. ”

“ To comport, then, with the surroundings in the ruling classes and with the necessity for discipline among men so base in mercenary wars for the benefit of the ruling classes alone, the Organization and Administration were made to consist of two [365] classes—officers and men—as widely separated as master and slave; the officer became by laws, written and unwritten, despotic and supercilious, with power even to take life without responsibility; the man servile and blindly obedient in the most abject sense, without remedies against his cruel wrongs. ”

“ The entire civil and military policy of the ancient commonwealths was such a system of training; in modern nations its place has been attempted to be supplied, principally, by religious teaching. And whenever and in proportion as the strictness of the restraining discipline was relaxed, the natural tendency of mankind to anarchy re-asserted itself ”

“ I will show you a scheme of military reform, in which I point out the necessity of returning to the limited professional armies which we used to have, for this present-day national army, as folks call it, which is a semi-civilian affair and at best a mere herd of men, is like a dead weight on us, and is bound to pull us down! ”

“ To this purpose, my lords, it is indispensably necessary, that the military subordination be inviolably preserved, and that discipline be discreetly exercised without any partial indulgence, or malicious severities; that every man be promoted according to his desert, and that military merit alone give any pretensions to military preferment. ”

“ That the government should be entrusted to the body of not less than Five Thousand, which they had already ordered to be created. (2) That every citizen, who furnished the equipment of a heavy armed soldier, either for himself or for any one else, should of right be a member of this body. ”

“ How command of a wider kind follows military command we can not readily see in societies which have no records; we can but infer that, along with increased power of coercion which the successful head warrior gains, naturally goes the exercise of a stronger rule in civil affairs. ”

“ But a sound centre of authority being what, in this disquisition, we have been led to seek, and right reason, or our best self, appearing alone to offer such a sound centre of authority, it is necessary to take note of the chief impediments which hinder, in this country, the extrication or recognition of this right reason as a paramount authority, with a view to afterwards trying in what way they can best be removed. ”

“ The organization and disciplining of over two hundred thousand men, of a race that for more than two centuries had patiently borne the burdens of an unrequited bondage, for the maintenance of laws which had guaranteed to them neither rights nor protection, was indeed a magnificent undertaking. ”

“ The maintenance of your Highness's authority at home rests principally upon the maintenance of an absolutely reliable force of a couple of thousand men able to enforce obedience wherever they are assembled. The result of such obedience will then render possible a regular administration and a certain execution of the law. ”

“ In all which changes we see progress toward a more integrated structure, toward increase of the militant part as compared with* the industrial part, toward the replacing of civil organization by military organization, toward the strengthening of restraints over the individual and regulation of his life in greater detail. ”

“ Let us then enumerate the functions of a state, and we shall easily elicit what we want:
First, there must be food; secondly, arts, for life requires many instruments; thirdly, there must be arms, for the members of a community have need of them, and in their own hands, too, in order to maintain authority both against disobedient subjects and against external assailants; ”

“ The ultimate power to command must rest with that authority which, if necessary, can force people to obey; and any plan of association which seeks to ignore the part which physical force plays in life is necessarily incomplete. ”

“ Many noble people in this great army will assume an attitude quite contrary to their preference. For a time the wheels of liberty and progress will be turned backward, [pg 252] and mediæval restraints will be considered necessary for self-preservation—for the maintenance of the present order of things and for the prevention of the new order which God has decreed, the due time for which is at hand. ”

“ Neither can I believe Souls or Dæmons in the Air have any Common-wealth, Magistrates, Officers and Executioners in their airy Kingdom; for wheresoever are Governments, Magistrates and Executioners, there are also Offences, and where there is power to offend, as well as to obey, there may and will be sometimes Rebellions and Civil Wars ”

“ Yet landowners and agents had been letting farms and houses for generations; and surely they ought to have known what it was that they were themselves doing. One explanation of the difficulty is, that whereas an army is constituted by certain regulations of a central authority, the industrial army has grown up unconsciously and spontaneously. ”

“ Every man that used his influence to send an army here, if the Constitution is carried out, (and the day will come, as the Lord lives, when we shall be able to carry it out,) will be at the disposal of the hemp, if we say so. ”

“ Holding all the power of the state in their hands, and speaking in the name of God, commanding the army, controlling the public treasury, and acting not only as judges but also as physicians, they punished heresy and rebellion, and ended lawsuits as well as diseases, by the death of the person most interested. ”