The common law of England, having sprung up in an age when all men bore arms occasionally and none constantly, recognised no distinction, in time of peace, between a soldier and any other subject; nor was there any Act resembling that by which the authority necessary for the government of regular troops is now annually confided to the Sovereign.

Some old statutes indeed made desertion felony in certain specified cases.

But those statutes were applicable only to soldiers serving the King in actual war, and could not without the grossest disingenuousness be so strained as to include the case of a man who, in a time of profound tranquillity at home and abroad, should become tired of the camp at Hounslow and should go back to his native village.

The government appears to have had no hold on such a man, except the hold which master bakers and master tailors have on their journeymen.

He and his officers were, in the eye of the law, on a level.