For, of all the maladies incident to the body politic, military insubordination is that which requires the most prompt and drastic remedies.

If the evil be not stopped as soon as it appears, it is certain to spread; and it cannot spread far without danger to the very vitals of the commonwealth.

For the general safety, therefore, a summary jurisdiction of terrible extent must, in camps, be entrusted to rude tribunals composed of men of the sword.
But, though it was certain that the country could not at that moment be secure without professional soldiers, and equally certain that professional soldiers must be worse than useless unless they were placed under a rule more arbitrary and severe than that to which other men were subject, it was not without great misgivings that a House of Commons could venture to recognise the existence and to make provision for the government of a standing army.

There was scarcely a public man of note who had not often avowed his conviction that our polity and a standing army could not exist together.

The Whigs had been in the constant habit of repeating that standing armies had destroyed the free institutions of the neighbouring nations.