regular troops were needed, and that, while France, Spain, Italy,
Belgium, and Germany swarmed with mercenary soldiers, the defence
of our island was still confided to the militia.

As the King had no standing army, and did not even attempt to
form one, it would have been wise in him to avoid any conflict
with his people. But such was his indiscretion that, while he
altogether neglected the means which alone could make him really
absolute, he constantly put forward, in the most offensive form,
claims of which none of his predecessors had ever dreamed. It was
at this time that those strange theories which Filmer afterwards
formed into a system and which became the badge of the most
violent class of Tories and high churchmen, first emerged into
notice. It was gravely maintained that the Supreme Being regarded
hereditary monarchy, as opposed to other forms of government,
with peculiar favour; that the rule of succession in order of
primogeniture was a divine institution, anterior to the
Christian, and even to the Mosaic dispensation; that no human
power, not even that of the whole legislature, no length of
adverse possession, though it extended to ten centuries, could
deprive a legitimate prince of his rights, that the authority of
such a prince was necessarily always despotic; that the laws, by
which, in England and in other countries, the prerogative was
limited, were to be regarded merely as concessions which the
sovereign had freely made and might at his pleasure resume; and
that any treaty which a king might conclude with his people was
merely a declaration of his present intentions, and not a
contract of which the performance could be demanded. It is
evident that this theory, though intended to strengthen the
foundations of government, altogether unsettles them. Does the