They, as was natural, considered it chiefly as an English question.

They had found the antipathy to a standing army insurmountably strong even in the late Parliament, a Parliament disposed to place large confidence in them and in their master.

In the new Parliament that antipathy amounted almost to a mania.
That liberty, law, property, could never be secured while the Sovereign had a large body of regular troops at his command in time of peace, and that of all regular troops foreign troops were the most to be dreaded, had, during the recent elections, been repeated in every town hall and market place, and scrawled upon every dead wall.

The reductions of the preceding year, it was said, even if they had been honestly carved into effect, would not have been sufficient; and they had not been honestly carried into effect.

On this subject the ministers pronounced the temper of the Commons to be such that, if any person high in office were to ask for what His Majesty thought necessary, there would assuredly be a violent explosion; the majority would probably be provoked into disbanding all that remained of the army; and the kingdom would be left without a single soldier.