What was the Lacedaemonian phalanx in the best days of Lacedaemon?
What was, the Roman legion in the best days of Rome?
What were the armies which conquered at Cressy, at Poitiers, at Agincourt, at Halidon, or at Flodden?
What was that mighty array which Elizabeth reviewed at Tilbury?
In the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries Englishmen who did not live by the trade of war had made war with success and glory.

Were the English of the seventeenth century so degenerate that they could not be trusted to play the men for their own homesteads and parish churches?
For such reasons as these the disbanding of the forces was strongly recommended.

Parliament, it was said, might perhaps, from respect and tenderness for the person of His Majesty, permit him to have guards enough to escort his coach and to pace the rounds before his palace.

But this was the very utmost that it would be right to concede.

The defence of the realm ought to be confided to the sailors and the militia.