But such a polity is suited only to a particular stage in the
progress of society. The same causes which produce a division of
labour in the peaceful arts must at length make war a distinct
science and a distinct trade. A time arrives when the use of arms
begins to occupy the entire attention of a separate class. It
soon appears that peasants and burghers, however brave, are
unable to stand their ground against veteran soldiers, whose
whole life is a preparation for the day of battle, whose nerves
have been braced by long familiarity with danger, and whose
movements have all the precision of clockwork. It is found that
the defence of nations can no longer be safely entrusted to
warriors taken from the plough or the loom for a campaign of
forty days. If any state forms a great regular army, the
bordering states must imitate the example, or must submit to a
foreign yoke. But, where a great regular army exists, limited
monarchy, such as it was in the middle ages, can exist no longer.
The sovereign is at once emancipated from what had been the chief
restraint on his power; and he inevitably becomes absolute,
unless he is subjected to checks such as would be superfluous in
a society where all are soldiers occasionally, and none
permanently.

With the danger came also the means of escape. In the monarchies
of the middle ages the power of the sword belonged to the prince;
but the power of the purse belonged to the nation; and the
progress of civilisation, as it made the sword of the prince more
and more formidable to the nation, made the purse of the nation
more and more necessary to the prince. His hereditary revenues
would no longer suffice, even for the expenses of civil