de corps which ought not to exist where the people value their liberty.

Standing armies, therefore, wherever necessaryand they are necessary at present, as well as far preferable to the medieval militia-ought to be as small as possible, and completely dependent on the legislature for their existence. Such standing armies as we see in the different countries of the European continent are wholly incompatible with civil liberty, by their spirit, number and cost.

A perfect dependence of the forces, however, not only requires short appropriations, and limited authority of the executive over them. It is farther necessary because they are under strict discipline, and therefore under a strong influence of the executive that these forces, and especially the army, be not allowed to become deliberative bodies, and that they be not allowed to vote as military bodies. Wherever these guarantees have been disregarded, liberty has fallen. These are rules of importance at all times, but especially in countries where unfortunately very large standing armies exist. In France, the army consists of half a million, yet universal suffrage gave it the right to vote, and the army as well as the navy did vote to justify the second of December, as well as to make Louis N. Bonaparte emperor. This may be in harmony with French "equality;" it may be democratic, if this term be taken in the sense in which it is wholly unconnected with liberty; all that we-people with whom liberty is more than a theory, or something æsthetically longed for, and who learn liberty as the

artisan learns his craft, by handling it-all that we know is, that it is not liberty; that it is directly destructive of it.

It was formerly the belief that standing armies were incompatible with liberty, and a very small one was granted to the king of England with much reluctance; and in France we have a gigantic standing army, itself incompatible with liberty, for whom in addition the right of voting is claimed.

The Bill of Rights, and our own Declaration of Independence, show how large a place the army occupied in the minds of the patriotic citizens and statesmen who drew up those historie documents, the reasons they had to mention it repeatedly, and of erecting fences against it.

Military bodies ought not to be allowed even the right of petitioning, as bodies. History fully proves the danger, that must be guarded against. English

4 I do not consider myself authorized to say that the Anglicans consider it an elementary guarantee of liberty not to be subjected to the obligation of serving in the standing army, but certain it is that as matters now stand, and as our feelings now are, we should not consider it compatible with individual liberty; indeed, it would be considered as intolerable oppression, if we were forced to spend part of our lives in the standing army. It would not be tolerated. The feeling would be as strong as against the French system of conscription, which drafts by lot a certain number of young men for the army, and permits those who have been drafted to furnish substitutes; as against the Prussian system, which obliges every one from the highest to the lowest, to serve a certain time in the standing army, with the exception only of a few "mediatized princes." The Anglicans, therefore, may be said to be unequivocally in favor of enlisted standing armies, where standing armies are necessary.

history, as well as that of other nations, furnishes us with instructive instances.

14. Akin to the last-mentioned guarantee, is that which secures to every citizen the right of possessing and bearing arms. Our constitution says: "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed upon;" and the Bill of Rights secured this right to every protestant. It extends now to every English subject.

Wherever attempts at establishing liberty have been made in recent times, on the continent of Europe, a general military organization of the people, or "national guards," has been deemed necessary, but we cannot point them out as characteristics of Anglican liberty.

CHAPTER XII.

PETITION. ASSOCIATION.

15. WE pass over to the great right of petitioning, so jealously suppressed wherever absolute power rules or desires to establish itself, so distinctly contended for by the English in their revolution, and so positively acknowledged by our constitution.

An American statesman of great mark has spoken lightly of the right of petition in a country in which the citizens are so fully represented as with us;' but this is an error. It is a right which can be abused, like any other right, and which in the United States is so far abused as to deprive the petition of weight and importance. It is nevertheless a sacred right, which in difficult times shows itself in its full magnitude, frequently serves as a safetyvalve, if judiciously treated by the recipients,

1 It was stated that the right of petition was of essential value only in a monarchy, against the encroachments of the crown. But this whole view was unquestionably a confined one, and caused by irritation against a peculiar class of persevering petitioners.

2 There is no more striking instance on record, so far as our knowledge goes, than the formidable petition of the chartists in 1848, and the calm and respect with which this threatening docu

and may give to the representatives or other bodies the most valuable information. It may right many a wrong, and the privation of it would at once be felt by every freeman as a degradation. The right of petitioning is indeed a necessary consequence of the right of free speech and deliberation, a simple, primitive and natural right. As a privilege it is not even denied the creature in addressing the deity. It is so natural a right, in all spheres where there are superiors and inferiors, that its special acknowledgment in charters or by laws, would be surprising, had not ample experience shown the necessity of expressing it.

16. Closely connected with the right just mentioned is the right of citizens peaceably to meet and to take public matters into consideration, and

17. To organize themselves into associations, whether for political, religious, social, scientific, industrial, commercial or cultural purposes. That this right can become dangerous, and that laws are frequently necessary to protect society against abuse, every one knows perfectly well who has the least knowledge of the French clubs in the first revolution. But it is with rights, in our political relations, as with the principles of our physical and mental organization—the more elementary and indispensable they are, the more dangerous they become, if not guided by reason. Attempts to suppress their action

ment was received by the commons, after a speech full of dignity and manly acknowledgment of the people by lord Morpeth, now earl of Carlisle.

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