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Standing army   /stˈændɪŋ ˈɑrmi/   Listen
Standing army

noun
1.
A permanent army of paid soldiers.






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"Standing army" Quotes from Famous Books



... the King) opposed each other, but neither wished to bring about a crisis. They allowed Charles to die peacefully in his bed and permitted the Catholic James II to succeed his brother in 1685. But when James, after threatening the country with the terrible foreign invention of a "standing army" (which was to be commanded by Catholic Frenchmen), issued a second Declaration of Indulgence in 1688, and ordered it to be read in all Anglican churches, he went just a trifle beyond that line of sensible demarcation which can only be transgressed by the most ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... understand, was indeed the course of history; and when that federation was formed, the various Counties entrusted to the Central Government only a strictly limited list of powers. The Central Government was authorised to treat with foreign nations in the name of the United Counties; to maintain a standing army of limited size, and to create a navy; to establish postal routes, regardless of County boundaries; to regulate commerce between the different Counties, to care for the national coast line and all navigable waters within the national dominions, and to levy taxes for national ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... kind of king which the world then knew. The darker features of these monarchies are not included. There is no harem, nor cruelty, nor monstrous vice, in the picture; but the diversion of labour to minister to royal pomp, the establishment of a standing army, the alienation of land to officials, heavy taxation and forced labour make up the items. To these is added (v. 18) that the royalty, now so eagerly desired, would sooner or later become a burden, and that then they or their sons would find ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... keeping a standing army, within the kingdom in time of peace, unless it be with consent ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... result of all this is still more serious. It is that religion, besides each separate mischief, 'subsidises a standing army for the perpetuation of all the rest.'[625] The priest gains power as a 'wonder-worker,' who knows how to propitiate the invisible Being, and has a direct interest in 'depraving the intellect,' cherishing superstition, surrounding himself with mysteries, representing the will of the Deity ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... three hundred concubines on the fattest of the land, and deck them all in robes of purple and gold; to build magnificent palaces, to dig canals, and construct gigantic reservoirs for parks and gardens; to maintain a large standing army in time of peace; to erect strong fortresses wherever caravans were in danger of pillage; to found cities in the wilderness; to level mountains and fill up valleys,—to accomplish all this even the resources of Solomon were insufficient. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord

... glowing eyes lent a ghostly radiance to hair or lace, at once weird and beautiful. Round and round the people walked to the strains of their national music, among them dozens upon dozens of the ever-present little black-and-tan policemen, who constitute the republic's standing army. ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... all lips were applied unto all ears! The elder ladies' wrinkles curl'd much crisper As they beheld; the younger cast some leers On one another, and each lovely lisper Smiled as she talk'd the matter o'er; but tears Of rivalship rose in each clouded eye Of all the standing army ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... the names be alphabetically enrolled. And the youth of this list being 600 foot in a tribe, that is, 30,000 foot in all the tribes; and 200 horse in a tribe, that is, 10,000 horse in all the tribes, are the second essay of the stratiots, and the standing army of this commonwealth to be always ready upon command to march. They whose balls are marked with M, amounting, by twenty horse and fifty foot in a tribe, to 2,500 foot and 500 horse in all the tribes, and they whose balls are marked with P, ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... modern sanitation had been adopted; sweeping, heretofore unknown, was a custom of the village; the highly objectionable skulls had been removed from the executive mansion; while every evening the chief and his standing army failed not to face the splendid Stars and Stripes as they were reverently lowered from a bamboo flagstaff, where during the day they floated over a village redeemed by ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel

... marked by the meeting of the States General, and the establishment, in principle at least, of a standing army. The Estates petitioned the willing King that the system of finance in the realm should be remodelled, and a permanent tax established for the support of an army. Thus, it was thought, solidity would be given to the royal power, and the long-standing ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre

... impressed by the military spirit so prevalent in European nations. Compared with the standing army of Germany, which has some 700,000 men, and with that of Russia, containing 1,000,000 men, or with that of most European nations, our army is insignificant in size. According to a law of 1901, the army of the United States cannot contain more than ...
— Our Government: Local, State, and National: Idaho Edition • J.A. James

... themselves. Of the senators, there are forty who are elected by the communes, and paid by Russia. There is also a force of eight hundred men paid, and residing in different districts, which forms an executive police; but there is nothing in the shape of a standing army. The Vladikas are appointed by the emperor in nepotal succession from the family of Petrovitch. The present Vladika received his education at St Petersburg, and several of his nephews are now there, from whom his successor will be chosen. I am not acquainted with the amount of temporal power ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... reign of queen Anne, but the peace of Utrecht brought a blast upon the nation, and has been the cause of all the evil that we have suffered to the present hour. He believes that the scheme of the South Sea was well intended, but that it miscarried by the influence of France. He considers a standing army as the bulwark of liberty, thinks us secured from corruption by septennial parliaments, relates how we are enriched and strengthened by the electoral dominions, and declares that the publick debt is ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... up with either alliance. On account of her position on an island, and because of her strong navy, she did not feel obliged to keep a large standing army such as the great ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet

... Nay, they are very civil, well-bred men, that is the truth on't; but won't they bring a standing army upon us? ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... written between sentences of death, exile, the solitary dungeon, distinguish his appearance and habits from Philip II of Spain, but, like him, he governed Europe from his bureau, guiding the movements of a standing army of 300,000 men, and a police and espionage department never surpassed and seldom rivalled in the western world. There was nothing in him that was great. But he was indisputable master of Europe for thirty-three years. Nesselrode, Hardenberg, Talleyrand even—whose ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb

... whether, in our admiration of his victory at Tours, we do not judge a little too much by the event, and whether there was not rashness in his risking the fate of France on the result of a general battle with the invaders. But when we remember that Charles had no standing army, and the independent spirit of the Frank warriors who followed his standard, it seems most probable that it was not in his power to adopt the cautious policy of watching the invaders, and wearing out their strength by delay. So dreadful and so widespread ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... yourself to relate elegantly; that is a good step toward speaking well in parliament. Take some political subject, turn it in your thoughts, consider what may be said both for and against it, then put those arguments into writing, in the most correct and elegant English you can. For instance, a standing army, a place bill, etc.; as to the former, consider, on one side, the dangers arising to a free country from a great standing military force; on the other side, consider the necessity of a force to repel force with. Examine whether a standing army, though in itself an evil, may ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... our story of the man who made himself the most thoroughly hated of all Chinese monarchs by the literati of that realm. Organizing his troops into a strong standing army, he engaged in a war of conquest in the south, adding Tonquin and Cochin China to his dominions, and carrying his arms as far as Bengal. In the north he again sent his armies into the desert to chastise the troublesome nomads, and then, conceiving that no advantage was to be gained in extending his ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... went on St. George, "ten to one will take to the trail to-night, if they haven't already. They'll be coming to Med and reorganizing the police force, or raising a standing army or starting a subway. You'd do well to drop down and give them some idea of what's happened, and I fancy you'd better all be somewhere about on the day after to-morrow, at noon. Not that there will be any wedding ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale

... upon the giants, among which none have been more celebrated than those of Korea, which embraces in its standing army alone many thousands of men, but thus far they have ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland

... no record as to the exact dimensions of Japan's standing army in the ninth century, but if we observe that troops were raised in the eight littoral provinces only—six in the south and two in the north—and in the island of Sado, and that the total number in the six southern provinces was only nine thousand, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... attitude towards the parties in the Reichstag, forced William II to assert himself. In spite of his leanings towards prudent reform, the Emperor-King, whose pride we know, has found himself all of a sudden in a sorry plight on the question of the increase of the standing army. The rising tide of public censure, mounting to the foot of the throne itself, found no one to hold it back but a bewildered lock-keeper. And so the Emperor, with his helmet on his head, appeared upon the scene, to take charge of the damming operations. On January ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam

... of the simplest. The actual standing army consists of one battalion and a force of artillery, but during the year 4,000 men pass through its ranks and receive a most efficient training. The men return to their homes at the end of four months' training, ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... to emulate the other great monarchs of the time. With the help of Hiram, king of Tyre, who furnished materials and artisans, he erected a magnificent temple on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem. He built costly palaces. He brought horses from Egypt, and organized a standing army, with its cavalry and chariots. He established a harem, bringing into it women from the heathen countries, whom he allowed in their idolatrous rites. He was even seduced to take part in them himself. Renowned for his knowledge and for his wisdom—which ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... appropriations that with the insufficient means granted him even the patient and frugal Washington was unable to prevent the continuance of the murderous raids of the Indians. In the Revolutionary War the same spirit prevailed. Virginia was not willing to raise and equip a standing army to defend her soil from the English invaders and as a consequence fell an easy victim to the first hostile army that entered her borders. The resistance offered to Cornwallis was shamefully weak, and the ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... deceived into the belief that Absalom McArthur's curiosity shop was capable of furnishing accoutrements for that noble little army, (standing army we call it!) on which the State prides itself not a little, and spends no end of money. For ourselves, (if the reader but permit us,) we have long admired this little Spartan force, saying all the good things of it our prosy brain could invent, and in the kindest manner recommending its uniform ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... institutions and the temper of our people are hostile to a standing army, and I am opposed to any policy, State or National, looking to governing the people by bayonet; yet in the most highly civilized communities a trained militia, recruited from the intelligent and industrious ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom

... States, whose armies are comparatively small and raised by voluntary enlistment. The first is the necessity of maintaining at all times (for it is impossible to predict what tomorrow may have in store for us) a well-organised standing army in the highest state of efficiency, and composed of thoroughly-trained and full-grown men. This army to be large enough for our military requirements, and adapted to the character, the habits, and the traditions of the people. It is not ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... the province of this book to deal with scientific temperance, but merely to state a few of the most serious results of the use of alcohol and other poisons. The white corpuscles of the blood have been called our "standing army," because they are natural germ-destroyers. One class of the white cells has the power of motion, and another class has the power of absorbing outside matter, such as disease-germs. One destroys the germs and the other moves them through the blood and carries them off with the waste products ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory

... We are far distant from the storm centers of the world. We have no foes within that demand a large standing army, and there are no enemies without that are anxious to try conclusions with us on land or sea. Then away with war talk and war scares and "jingoism." In time of peace let us prepare for peace, that ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... I said before, was nearly always ready and lubricant. To one who spoke no French and not enough German to hurt him, this proficiency in language on the part of the German standing army was a precious boon. The ordinary double-barreled dictionary of phrases had already disclosed itself as a most unsatisfying volume in which to put one's trust. It was wearing on the disposition to turn the leaves trying to find out how to ask somebody to pass the butter and find ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... spoke, with a living, breathing enthusiasm of entreaty, which might have moved even the dry bones in the valley of the prophet's vision to rise up and become a great standing army, the Pope's figure seemed to grow more and more attenuated,—his worn white hands grasping the gilt arms of his chair, looked like the claws of a dead bird—and his face, shrunken and withered, like a Chinese ivory carving of ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... Heaven called them; only Heaven never called all the women at once; but when the king was crowned, the mission done, they have turned back with desire to their sheltered, gentle, unobtrusive life again. There has no business to be a standing army of women; not even a standing political army. Women have navigated and brought home ships when commanders have died or been stricken helpless upon the ocean; they have done true, intelligent, patient work for science, art, religion; and those have done the ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.

... paid. He was turned adrift when no longer wanted. The officers of the lower grades were but little superior to the men. With all this I have seen as brave stands made by some of these men as I have ever seen made by soldiers. Now Mexico has a standing army larger than that of the United States. They have a military school modelled after West Point. Their officers are educated and, no doubt, generally brave. The Mexican war of 1846-8 would be an ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... Brotherhood. He knows that if he betrays us he will die within twenty-four hours, and that there is no power on earth could save him; if he fled to the uttermost ends of the earth his doom would overtake him with the certainty of fate. So have no uneasiness. We are as safe here as if a standing army of a hundred thousand of our ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly

... precision, which, if he had not been pursuing an object pernicious to his country and to his kind, would have justly entitled him to high admiration. He saw that there was one instrument, and only one, by which his vast and daring projects could be carried into execution. That instrument was a standing army. To the forming of such an army, therefore, he directed all the energy of his strong mind. In Ireland, where he was viceroy, he actually succeeded in establishing a military despotism, not only over the aboriginal population, but also over the English colonists, and was able to boast ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... in every direction. Not to numbers or wealth do we owe our significance among the nations; but to the fact that we have shown that respect for law is compatible with civil and religious liberty; that a free people can become prosperous and strong, and preserve order without king or standing army; that the State and the Church can move in separate orbits and still co-operate for the common welfare; that men of different races and beliefs may live together in peace; that in spite of an abnormally rapid increase of population and of wealth, ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding

... suppressing it is too thorough. It involves not merely the extermination of the fighting spirit, but of many excellent qualities, physical and moral, which are associated with the fighting spirit. Benjamin Franklin seems to have been the first to point out that "a standing army diminishes the size and breed of the human species." Almost in Franklin's lifetime that was demonstrated on a wholesale scale, for there seems little reason to doubt that the size and stature of the ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... soldier, fighting man, Amazon, man at arms, armigerent[obs3]; campaigner, veteran; swordsman, sabreur[obs3], redcoat, military man, Rajput. armed force, troops, soldiery, military forces, sabaoth[obs3], the army, standing army, regulars, the line, troops of the line, militia, yeomanry, volunteers, trainband, fencible[obs3]; auxiliary, bersagliere[obs3], brave; garde-nationale, garde-royale[Fr]; minuteman [Am. Hist.]; auxiliary forces, reserve forces; reserves, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... first we have had a clear and settled policy with regard to military establishments. We never have had, and while we retain our present principles and ideals we never shall have, a large standing army. If asked, Are you ready to defend yourselves? we reply, Most assuredly, to the utmost; and yet we shall not turn America into a military camp. We will not ask our young men to spend the best years of their lives making soldiers of ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson

... Standing Army, (United Kingdom,) March, 1885, were proportionately distributed as follows: forty-three per cent. in England, two per cent. in Scotland, twenty-five per cent. in Ireland, and thirty-five per ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough

... was always afraid that popular government would mean mob-rule; and absolute government is accordingly recommended as the euthanasia of the British constitution. Not even the example of Sweden convinced him that a standing army might exist without civil liberty being endangered; and he has all the noxious fallacies of his time upon the balance of power. Above all, it is striking to see his helplessness before the problem of national character. Mainly he ascribes it to the form of government, and that in turn ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski

... the Republic which I had visited in my search for concessions, and, after due consideration, I threw in my lot with the revolutionary party. It is usually a sound move, for on these occasions the revolutionists have generally corrupted the standing army, and they win before the other side has time to re-corrupt it at a higher figure. In South America, thrice armed is he who has his quarrel just, but six times he who gets his bribe in fust. On the occasion of which I speak, however, a hitch was caused by the fact of another party revolting ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 22, 1914 • Various

... the cause. Arcite is owned even by the gods above, And conquering Mars insults the Queen of Love. So laughed he when the rightful Titan failed, And Jove's usurping arms in heaven prevailed. Laughed all the powers who favour tyranny, And all the standing army of the sky. But Venus with dejected eyes appears. And weeping on the lists distilled her tears; Her will refused, which grieves a woman most, And, in her champion foiled, the cause of Love is lost. Till Saturn said:—"Fair daughter, now be still, "The blustering fool has ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden

... were it to sink into nothing to-morrow. Had no such tangible fruits hitherto ripened, some portion of such honor would still accrue to it for having shown that a people may grow from a handful to an empire without hereditary rulers, without a privileged class, without a state Church, without a standing army, without tumult in the largest cities and without stagnant ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... society, whether it be based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at the present moment, on wage-labor, the class of the oppressors is an armed class. Not only the standing army of the present day, but also the present-day popular militia—even in the most democratic bourgeois republics, as in Switzerland—means an armament of ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo

... act, passed at the close of the rebellion, by the votes of Democrats and Union men alike, in the Senate and in the House, and by the assent of the president, regiments of colored men, cavalry and infantry, form part of the standing army of ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard

... other hand, who have no negroes to plant for us, who must pay our farmers far more than the wretched black earns, have no 'mud-sill' whereon to rest. We are manufacturers, and can not form a permanent military nation. We hold in horror the idea of a standing army, and of having our young men who might grow up wealthy and learned—and what Northern youth is there who has not his 'chances'?—become garrison-soldiers for life. We love learning, culture, independence, progress. Year by year sees noble schools rising among us—schools in which ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... older days of Roman history the fighting forces had been a "citizen army," called out for so long as it was needed, and levied from full and true Roman citizens. In the imperial times with which we are here dealing it had become a standing army. Soldiering was a profession, for which the men volunteered, and, so far as Roman citizens were concerned, it was now seldom, if ever, the case that military service required to be made compulsory on their part. It is true that ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... it in a critical spirit, it begins to grow nebulous and very difficult to define. We can dimly make out four distinct ideas mingled in the current notion. First, there is the idea of making war not merely with a professional standing army, but with the whole armed nation—a conception which of course was not really Napoleon's. It was inherited by him from the Revolution, but was in fact far older. It was but a revival of the universal practice which obtained in the barbaric stages of ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett

... external, followed. At the time of this first visit of Farragut a contest had for some time been going on between two parties, representing two opposite political ideas, and striving in arms for the control of the State. The ideal of one was a strong centralized government supported by a powerful standing army. This naturally found its most numerous constituents among the wealthy and educated inhabitants of the principal city, Buenos Ayres. The province of the same name, however, and the other provinces generally, favored a looser form of confederation. The former party, ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan

... freemen, is the natural strength and only stable security of a free government; and that such militia will relieve our mother country from any expense in our protection and defence, will obviate the pretence of a necessity for taxing us on that account, and render it unnecessary to keep any standing army—ever dangerous ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler

... asked, "did I raise taxes upon my subjects?" My first impulse was to say, that I did not tax them at all, for I had a perfect horror of doing so; but prudence would not allow of my saying that; because it was too probable he would demand to know how, in that case, I maintained a standing army; and if I once allowed it to be supposed that I had none, there was an end forever to the independence of my people. Poor things! they would have been invaded and dragooned in a month. I took some days, therefore, to consider that point; but at last replied, that my people, being maritime, supported ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... prejudice against negro suffrage. He declared that "of all the dangers which our Nation has yet encountered, none are equal to those which must result from the success of the effort now making to Africanize the half of our country." "We must not," said he, "delude ourselves. It will require a strong standing army, and probably more than two hundred millions per annum, to maintain the supremacy of negro governments after they are established,—a sum thus thrown away which would, if properly used, form a sinking-fund large enough to pay the whole National debt ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... that very reason. For the method of the Tudor sovereigns, like that of their predecessors, was the very opposite to that of tyrants in every age and country. The first act of a tyrant has always been to disarm the people, and to surround himself with a standing army. The Tudor method was, as Mr. Froude shows us by many interesting facts, to keep the people armed and drilled, even to compel them to learn the use of weapons. Throughout England spread one vast military organisation, which made every adult a soldier, and enabled him to find, at ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley

... philosophic kings, and the productive class of the artists and artisans, moves the military order, as the sensitive armed conscience, the armed will, of the State, its executive power in the fullest sense of that term—a "standing army," as Plato supposes, recruited from a great hereditary caste born and bred to such functions, and certainly very different from the mere "militia" of actual Greek states, hastily summoned at need to military service from the fields and workshops. Remember ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater

... father had been working during his long and successful reign, he threw himself with almost passionate energy into the accomplishment of his task. With this object he was the first sovereign to depart from feudal usages and to maintain a standing army. He appeared at one time to be on the point of accomplishing his aim. Lorraine, which divided his southern from his northern possessions, was for a short time in his possession. Intervening in Gelderland between the Duke Arnold of Egmont and his son Adolf, he took ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson

... the documents by a rapid horseman to the Nyitra district, while I hasten with the other towards Slavonia. Meanwhile, you will organize here a standing army. You have already arranged, I suppose, to procure ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... hour came when the standing Army was reduced to 80 men. None the less, the quaint notion has survived that an enlightened interest in military affairs is somehow undemocratic. And none the less, recurring war has invariably found the United States inadequately prepared ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... of money in the Middle Ages. This prevented him from securing the services of a great corps of paid officials, such as every government finds necessary to-day. Moreover, it made it impossible for him to support the standing army which would have been necessary to suppress the constant insubordination of his officials and of the powerful and restless nobility, whose chief ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... measure as a violation of the constitution as established by the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement. It was strenuously maintained that both these statutes forbade the raising or keeping on foot a standing army in the kingdom in time of peace, and also the introduction of foreign troops into this kingdom, without the previous consent of Parliament, on any pretence whatever; and that "the fact that Gibraltar and Minorca ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... others, and a calamity when we find ourselves overborne by the multitude of our assailants; as the power of the crown is always thought too great by those who suffer by its influence, and too little by those in whose favour it is exerted; and a standing army is generally accounted necessary by those who command, and dangerous and oppressive by ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... which he affects to think bear out his argument. That these books show that there have been advocates of militarism in England is undoubtedly true. The present war illustrates that there was need of such literature, for a nation which faced so great a trial as the present, with a standing army that was pitiful in comparison with that of Germany and without any involuntary service law, certainly had need of some literary stimulus to self-preparation. No one quarrels with Bernhardi in his discussions of the ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck

... dispensation from them, that special courts should not be erected, that cruel punishments should not be inflicted, that jurors ought to be duly impanelled and returned, that taxes should not be levied without a law, nor a standing army kept without consent of Parliament, that parliamentary elections should be free, and Parliament be held frequently—all these are not rights of the individual, but duties of the government. Of the thirteen articles of the Bill of Rights ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek

... and big and everybody likes him," went on the wife as though bent on being fair at all costs. "Sometimes I think that's the trouble. It's like being married to a standing army. In times of peace one doesn't need a standing army and in times of war it's me that he ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... thought by his dupes to be an amazing hero. He lodged with Cob (the water-carrier) and his wife Tib. Master Stephen was greatly struck with his "dainty oaths," such as "By the foot of Pharaoh!" "Body of Caesar!" "As I am a gentleman and a soldier!" His device to save the expense of a standing army is inimitable for ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... administered justice in their own territories. Their retainers were the famous two-sworded men so long a terror to Europeans, and who strongly objected to any intercourse with foreigners, probably foreseeing its inevitable result. In 1868 the whole of these ferocious men were disarmed, and a standing army modelled on the French fashion established for the defence of the Empire. The Japanese Navy was organised about the same time by an English officer, and at first consisted of a few obsolete American and English men-of-war. ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery

... interest and permanent fame of his country. The result of that trial proved, that, notwithstanding the high degree of excitement then existing in consequence of the measures of the British government, a jury of Massachusetts would not deprive the most reckless enemies, even the officers of that standing army quartered among them, which they so perfectly abhorred, of any part of that protection which the law, in its mildest and most indulgent interpretation, affords ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... Ayres there occurred one of those disastrous revolutions which have from time to time shaken the whole Republic. The President, Don Juarez Celman, had long been unpopular, and, the mass of the people being against him, as well as nearly half of the standing army, and all the fleet then anchored in the river, the time was considered ripe ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... frontier. Fort Harrison had fifty men, Fort Wayne eighty-five, Fort Dearborn fifty-three, Fort Mackinac eighty-eight, and Detroit one hundred and twenty—a total force of fewer than four hundred. The entire standing army of the United States numbered but sixty-seven hundred men, and it was obvious that the trans-Alleghany population would be obliged to carry almost alone the burden of their own defense. The task would not be easy; for General Brock, commanding ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg

... seventy years, seventeen new sovereignties, the smallest of them larger than Great Britain, have peaceably united themselves to the Federation. No standing army was raised, no national debt sunk, no great exertion was made, but there they are. And the last mail brings news of three more great States about to be joined to the thirty: Minnesota in the north-west, ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith

... declarations of France, it might still be well to keep up. the military ardor of our citizens, and to have the militia in good order: 'The militia,' said Pickering, 'the militia never did any good to this country, except in the single affair of Bunker's Hill; that we must have a standing army of fifty thousand men, which being stationed in different parts of the continent, might serve as rallying points for the militia, and so render them of some service.' In his conversation with Mr. Adams, Logan mentioned ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... things themselves. In this war it must be remarked, that Richard made a considerable use of the mercenaries who had been so serviceable to Henry the Second; and the King of France, perceiving how much his father, Louis, had suffered by a want of that advantage, kept on foot a standing army in constant pay, which none of his predecessors had done before him, and which afterwards for a long time very unaccountably fell into ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... subjects of political economy, than I ever derived from all the other authors I ever read besides. Mr. Cobbett, at that time, censured in strong terms the volunteer system, and ridiculed their pranks and squabbles with the most cutting irony; for he was at that time the mighty champion of a standing army. Mr. Cobbett had been a soldier, and a zealous, active, and intelligent soldier; therefore, as such, it was not only excusable in him to be an advocate for that system, with which he was so well acquainted, and whose power he so well knew, but his predilection ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt

... reign, was supposed to have some ninety millions of the human family subject to his sway. With a standing army of a million of men, two hundred thousand of whom were cavalry, he possessed power unequaled by that of any other single kingdom on the globe. In the recent struggle at Sevastopol all the energies of England, France and Turkey were expended against Russia alone, ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... live among very bad neighbors and that our generals must needs be richer than our kings. He asked what business we had out of our own islands, unless upon the score of trade or treaty, or to defend the coasts with our fleet. Above all, he was amazed to hear me talk of a mercenary standing army in the midst of peace and among a free people. He said if we were governed by our own consent, in the persons of our representatives, he could not imagine of whom we were afraid, or against whom we were ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift

... they are not excited and say little," he said. "They will do the acting and leave the talking to the private citizens. The only argument in favour of the war and the large standing army which might be its consequence is that several hundred thousand more men would have disciplined brains ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... arrogance, and enmity to the English; and that the court party remonstrated against the imprudence of exposing England defenceless to the power of her haughty enemy. The Parliament persisted in refusing the solicited supply; voted the standing army a grievance; bitterly complained of the French alliance, and resolved that his majesty should be advised to proceed in a treaty with the States-General, in order to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... man, if your love towards the lady be firm and true, if your wishes for her welfare be pure and holy, if you are a true patriot—behold! I will tell you—for this came I hither—say that you will be one of the standing army of England! say but the word—to enjoy rank, opportunities of distinction, honour, and ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... only a faint idea of the mass of humanity to express its size merely by so many thousands. The spectator looking down upon it from some upper seat of the boundless gallery of the choral amphitheater saw an awe-inspiring scene. People in numbers almost as great as the standing army of the United States were packed so closely together that all individuality was lost, and the pulsating aggregate looked like the exposed and mottled back of some submerged sea monster. Between the parts of the programme the combined hum of ten thousand voices floated upon the ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... of paid soldiery, and power of the mechanical and trading classes, O puissant one.[22] Among all these, power of allies and power of wealth are superior to the rest. The power of classes and that of the standing army are equal. The power of spies is regarded by the king as equal in efficacy to either of the above, on many occasions, when the time comes for applying each. Calamity, O king, as it overtakes rulers should be regarded as of many forms. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... having at the time long forsworn your intelligence offices, I had him sent to me from the Commissioners of Emigration, all the way from New York, culled out carefully, in fine, at my particular request, from a standing army of eight hundred boys, the flowers of all nations, so they wrote me, temporarily in barracks on an East River island—I say, this thirtieth boy was in person not ungraceful; his deceased mother a lady's maid, or something of that sort; and in manner, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... scatters to all peoples from the horn of plenty. Favored land, may you prove worthy of all your blessings and show to the world that after ages of wars and conquests there comes at last to the troubled earth the glorious reign of peace. But no new steel cruisers, no standing army. These are the devil's tools in monarchies; the Republic's weapons are the ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... of government, Mr. North," said I, "is the very best on earth if it goes well, and the worst if it goes ill. We have no standing army to fight for an administration as for a throne or dynasty; so that if a State secedes, the question is how to coerce that people, if it be best to attempt it. Citizens do not like to march against their brethren. Think of our taking up ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams

... have made up their minds to earn their title. They fought the "Court," or Ministerial, party on a variety of issues. They supported motions for the reduction of the numbers of the army, and they declaimed against the whole principle of a standing army with patriotic passion, which sometimes appeared for the time quite genuine. They brought illustrations of all kinds, applicable and inapplicable, from Greek and Roman, from French and Spanish history, even from Eastern history, to show that ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... in debt. The pirates of Morocco had destroyed our commerce in the Mediterranean, Spain threatened the valley of the Mississippi. Our relations with England were full of bitter memories; a country larger than Europe was to be protected, and we had a standing army of only 600 men. Washington called around him as advisers Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of Foreign Affairs; Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury; Henry Knox, Secretary of War; Edmund Randolph, Attorney-General, and John Jay, Chief Justice, and by these men, under God, the crumbling ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple

... 'moderate Socialist' proposes to use the bourgeois state with its fraudulent democracy, its illusory theory of 'unity of all the classes,' its standing army, police and bureaucracy oppressing and baffling the masses; the revolutionary Socialist maintains that the bourgeois state must be completely destroyed, and proposes the organization of a new state—the state of the organized producers—of ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto

... The King did not see the wink, but he had caught a tone in the voice of the invader, which brought, as I thought, a slight flush to his swarthy cheek. The soldier-his name was Lilikalu —looked from his King to the critic of his King's kingdom and standing army, and there was a glow beneath his long eyelashes which suggested that three-quarters of a century of civilisation had not quite drawn the old savage spirit from the descendants ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... include an increase in the number of soldiers stationed at Fort Riley to 3,000. If the proposed increase in the standing army is carried out, there may be more than that. The Government evidently has faith in the location of the fort. While it has abandoned and consolidated other stations, it has all the time been increasing its expenditures here, and the estimates for the next year aggregate ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... after inauguration the whole problem was presented to him in a letter from Major Anderson with his hungry soldiers at Fort Sumpter. He wanted provisions and reinforcements; twenty thousand soldiers would be necessary to hold the fort, and the whole standing army numbered sixteen thousand men. General Scott advised evacuation. Lincoln said, "When Anderson goes out of Fort Sumpter I shall have to go out of the White House." The military advisers differed: the cabinet differed; and while Lincoln pondered over the problem, Seward acquiesced in the ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers

... by a bullet at once, without even the form of a trial. The department of the cavalry seemed to a casual observer to be much more efficient than that of the infantry. The fact is, the average Mexican is an admirable horseman, and appears better in that capacity than in any other. The national or standing army numbers about forty-five thousand of all arms, besides which each state has a regular militia force, but of a poorly organized character, in most instances, as we were informed, being neither uniformed, nor drilled at regular periods. President Diaz is opposed to the employment of criminals, such ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou

... down upon one that is softer and more civilized, easily carries all before it, acquires the wealth and luxury which it desires, and being content with them, seeks for nothing further, but assimilates itself by degrees to the character and condition of the people whom it has conquered. A standing army, disposed in camps and garrisons, may be kept up; but if there is a cessation of actual war even for a generation, the severity of military discipline will become relaxed, the use of arms will grow unfamiliar, the physical type will decline, the belligerent spirit will die away, and the conquerors ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... however, must depend on the aims and quality of your diplomacy; and, if you have Junkers in your Foreign Office and jesters on your War Staff, you must have permanent conscription. It is difficult to imagine any one in this country advocating a large standing army plus a navy, which is vital to us; but such there were and such there will always be. With the minds of these militarists, protectionists and conscriptionists, Arthur Balfour had nothing in common at any time. He and the men of his opinions were called the Blue Water School; they deprecated ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith

... a few decades ago, prevail in the country. Modern culture now pervades the country in the remotest corners. Contrary to its own purpose, militarism exercises a certain revolutionary influence. The enormous increase of the standing army weighs, in so far as the blood-tax is concerned, heaviest of all upon the country districts. The degeneration of industrial and city life compels the drawing of by far the larger portion of soldiers from the rural population. When the farmer's son, the day laborer, or the servant ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... truce of two years, Henry VI. of England (1422-1461) married Margaret of Anjou, the daughter of King Rene. Henry was of a gentle temper, but lacked prudence and vigor. The king of France and the dauphin began the organization of a standing army, which greatly increased the military strength of the country (1439). In 1449 the war with England was renewed. With the defeat of the English, and the death of their commander, Talbot, in 1453, the contest of a century came to an end. All that England ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... present Government, the Government, instead of the Courts, are the final judges in cases of disputed elections. No Election Committees are allowed. This operates against candidates opposed to the Government, because the Government has virtually a vast standing army of committee men, henchmen, officials being allowed openly to take part in swaying elections, and the Government being in a position, by the distribution of contracts, appointments, purchase of concessions, the expenditure of Secret Service ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... and our authority at home, I would have a very small, well-paid, and thoroughly efficient standing army, which would form a perfect model in military matters, and a splendid skeleton on which the muscle and sinew of the land might wind itself if invasion threatened. For the rest, I would keep my bayonets and artillery in serviceable condition, ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne

... it takes a long time to teach them to shoot, and that unless they can shoot accurately they are of little value as soldiers. If, however, the young men who are graduating from our high schools in the different States should be skilled riflemen the country can rest content with a small standing army, knowing that in case of war it can put into the field at short notice a force of volunteers whose skill in rifle shooting will enable them to be fully the equal of any army which ...
— A report on the feasibility and advisability of some policy to inaugurate a system of rifle practice throughout the public schools of the country • George W. Wingate

... not mean that we are in favour of the present system of organizing those forces. We do not believe in conscription, and we do not believe that the nation should continue to maintain a professional standing army to be used at home for the purpose of butchering men and women of the working classes in the interests of a handful of capitalists, as has been done at Featherstone and Belfast; or to be used abroad to murder ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... future, following on the trail of these wide-reaching English convulsions, that Charles felt it necessary to make preparations for a strong military defence calculated to suit any emergency. Louis XI. had a permanent force at his command. He had made the beginning of the French standing army, the nucleus of one of those bodies that have ever since urged each other on to expensive growth from opposite sides of European frontiers. What one monarch possessed that must his ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... into a self-sustaining condition through the leading-string process of "tutelage." It appeals to our historical experience, applying to present conditions the lessons of Hayti, Mexico, and Venezuela. In dealing with those cases, we did not find a great standing army or an enormous navy necessary; and, if not then, why now? Why such a difference between the Philippines and Hayti? Is Cuba larger or nearer to us than Mexico? When, therefore, in future they ask us what course and policy we Anti-Imperialists propose, our answer should be that we ...
— "Imperialism" and "The Tracks of Our Forefathers" • Charles Francis Adams

... and subsequently issued, with additions, as a pamphlet, under the title of "Social Diseases and Worse Remedies," because, although the clever attempt to rush the country on behalf of that scheme has been balked, Booth's standing army remains afoot, retaining all the capacities for mischief which are inherent in its constitution. I am desirous that this fact should be kept steadily in view; and that the moderation of the clamour of the drums and trumpets should ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... send to America a standing army of at least ten thousand men to protect the colonies against the Indians and other enemies," the King, George III, reasoned, "it is only fair that the colonists should pay a part of the cost ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy

... which the maintenance of this huge standing army of a half of a million of men who are more or less always besotted men whose intemperance impairs their working power, consumes their earnings, and renders their homes wretched, has long been a familiar theme of the platform. But ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... are not synonymous with a large standing army. A small, well-prepared army may be the nucleus around which an efficient military system can be built. The Swiss organization is at present most interesting, for it has saved that country from becoming involved in the present war. Had Belgium been as well prepared as was Switzerland, ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood

... sailors; not, however, in destroying human life, but in perpetuating it. As recruiting agents, therefore, and the first drill-masters or instructors of the members of future battalions, they serve the Government as effectually as any standing army. ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster

... diminished, in the second, third, and fourth years, to 129 in the fifth and sixth, then again rose, through all the succeeding years, to 411 in the twentieth. The experience of the British army, in this respect, is corroborated by that of ours in the Mexican War. From the old standing army 502, from the additional force recently enlisted 548, and from the volunteers 1,178, in 10,000 of each, were discharged on account of disability. Some part of this great difference between the regulars and volunteers is doubtless due to the well-known fact, that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various

... along a splintered line of fracture extending for thousands of miles,—but the Saracens of the Nineteenth Century; a fierce, intolerant, fanatical people, the males of which will be a perpetual standing army; hating us worse than the Southern Hamilcar taught his swarthy boy to hate the Romans; a people whose existence as a hostile nation on our frontier is incompatible with our peaceful development? Their ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... applause; All own the chief, when Fortune owns the cause. Arcite is own'd even by the gods above, And conquering Mars insults the Queen of Love. So laugh'd he, when the rightful Titan fail'd, And Jove's usurping arms in heaven prevail'd. 670 Laugh'd all the powers who favour tyranny; And all the standing army of the sky. But Venus with dejected eyes appears, And, weeping on the lists, distill'd her tears; Her will refused, which grieves a woman most, And, in her champion foil'd, the cause of Love is lost. Till Saturn said, Fair daughter, now be still, The ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... in my lecture on Giovanni Pisano; but whether you can glance at them or not, fix in your mind this institution of truly civil or civic building in Germany, as distinct from the building of baronial castles for the security of robbers: and of a standing army consisting of every ninth man, called a "burgher" ("townsman")—a soldier, appointed to learn that profession that he may guard the walls—the exact reverse of our notion ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... of it—courage for the morning, courage for the noonday, and courage for the evening. Life is a battle and a struggle which never ends. He must fight for hope and cheer, laughter and happiness, every inch of the way along life's path." Another writer has said, "courage is the standing army of the soul, keeping it from conquest, pillage and slavery." But the child in the residential school knows little of all this, has little occasion to know. Dr. Park Lewis says: "The added importance of having ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley

... Princess—the effort to unite the young Montpensier with the Infanta of Spain—the environment of Paris with Bastilles, with the avowed purpose of fortifying order by turning the ordnance which should protect into enginery of destruction—an immense standing army—the notorious corruption of officials, and the audacious dabbling of Ministers in the stocks, if not the King himself, by means of information obtained by the Government telegraph, and withheld from the ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg

... clings tenaciously to the usages of his Church, and perhaps this may contribute not a little to the purity in which he maintains the specific characteristics of his race. German education, German law and government, service in the standing army, and many other agencies, are in antagonism to his national exclusiveness; but the wives and mothers here, as elsewhere, are a conservative influence, and the habits temporarily laid aside in the outer world are recovered by the fireside. ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... in all the rude nations that have attained civilisation. These nations seem to begin in what I may call a consultative and tentative absolutism. The king of early days, in vigorous nations, was not absolute as despots now are; there was then no standing army to repress rebellion, no organised ESPIONAGE to spy out discontent, no skilled bureaucracy to smooth the ruts of obedient life. The early king was indeed consecrated by a religious sanction; he was essentially a man apart, a man ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

... science and the experience of all nations to direct her in forming plans of government." There is an equal distribution of landed property, freed from the laws of entail and primogeniture; there is no standing army, and there is freedom from ecclesiastical tyranny; education is general; there is no artificial rank in society, and from necessity Americans are not confined to single lines of industry; but various occupations will meet in one man. "Knowledge ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder

... would express to your Excellency the just Resentment which we feel at the Indignities offerd to our worthy fellow Citizens in Boston and the frequent Violations of private property by the Soldiers under your Command. These Enormities committed by a standing Army, in our opinion, unlawfully posted there in a time of Peace, are irritating in the greatest Degree, and if not remedied, will endanger the involving all America in the Horrors of a civil War! Your Situation Sir is extremely critical. A rupture between ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams

... and governors, requires them to raise their respective quotas, and report to a commander-in-chief at a general rendezvous. These recruits are clothed, equipped with arms and ammunition, and "subsisted" with daily rations of rice, oil, etc., but are not otherwise paid. The small standing army, which serves as the nucleus upon which these irregulars are gathered and formed, consists of infantry, cavalry, elephant-riders, archers, and private body-guards, paid at the rate of from five to ten dollars ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... had he not been misplaced in history. Nevertheless, he imagined himself governed by a profound policy. He had one dominant idea, to make Burgundy a kingdom. From the moment when, with almost the first standing army known to history, and with coffers well filled by his cautious father's economy, he threw himself into the lists against the crafty Louis, down to the day when he was found dead, naked, deserted, and with his face frozen into ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... part of the military force of a country which is not made a portion of the regular standing army. For instance, our States Militia, or National Guard, is an army reserve. The men belonging to it can follow other professions, and need not be soldiers all the time; but they learn how to be soldiers, and can be called on by the government whenever ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, April 1, 1897 Vol. 1. No. 21 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... army, from the selection of the recruits to the election of the Commander-in-Chief, also possesses exceptional interest, because Switzerland is the only country in the world which has so far succeeded in maintaining an efficient militia without the vestige of a standing army. An attempt was made in 1885 to deal with the evils of intemperance, by establishing a state monopoly of the manufacture and sale of spirituous liquors, the Revenue thus derived being apportioned amongst the Cantons ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various

... thoroughly imbued with the martial spirit, stooped and drew the comandante's sword, which was girded about him, and charged his foe. He chased the standing army four squares, playfully prodding its squealing rear and hacking at its ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... presides in the admiralties in person or by proxy; appoints lieutenant-admirals and other officers; and establishes councils of war, whose sentences are not executed till he approves them. His revenue, exclusive of his private income, amounts to three hundred thousand florins. The standing army which he commands consists of about forty thousand men. Such is the nature of the celebrated Belgic confederacy, as delineated on parchment. What are the characters which practice has stamped upon it? Imbecility in the government; discord among the provinces; foreign influence and ...
— The Federalist Papers

... of the Pope was encouraged by King Charles, who, in fact, made several shrewd moves to secure the power which his good-fortune, and not his abilities, had won. Among other innovations he established a "standing army," the first permanent body of government troops in Teutonic Europe. By this step he did much to alter the mediaeval into the modern world; he did much to establish that supremacy of kings over both nobles and people ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... the White House, with a divine right to all the canvas-back ducks in the country. There are so many kings out of business now that they could easily give us a bankrupt one to put on our trade dollar, or something really sweet in emperors who have seen better days. And a standing army of a hundred thousand men, all drum-majors, in gorgeous uniforms, helmets, feathers, gold lace, would certainly scare the Mexicans into caniptious and unconditional surrender. The more I think of it, the more delightful ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various

... received the same relief from its oppressions and the same remedy to its disorders. Before this time Chester was little less distempered than Wales. The inhabitants, without rights themselves, were the fittest to destroy the rights of others; and from thence Richard the Second drew the standing army of archers with which for a time he oppressed England. The people of Chester applied to Parliament in a petition penned as I shall ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke

... minority shall be safeguarded by proportional representation. National minorities shall enjoy equal rights. The government shall be parliamentary in form and shall recognise the principles of initiative and referendum. The standing army will be replaced by militia. The Czecho-Slovak nation will carry out far-reaching social and economic reforms. The large estates will be redeemed for home colonisation, and patents of nobility will be abolished. ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek

... services of mighty generals: one Meng-tien in especial, a bright particular star in the War-God's firmament. An early step to disarm the nations, and have all weapons sent to Changan; then, with these, to furnish forth a great standing army, which he sent out under Meng-tien to conquer. The Middle Kingdom and the quondam Great Powers were quieted; then south of the Yangtse the great soldier swept, adding unknown regions to his master's domain. Then rorth and west, till the Huns and their like had ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... the keeping a standing army in these colonies, in times of peace, without the consent of the legislature of that colony in which such army is kept, is ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall

... is almost directly opposite the Banqueting House, and stands on the site of an old house for the Gentlemen Pensioners who formed the guard when there was not a standing army in England. This itself superseded the tilt-yard built by King Henry VIII., though the actual yard was the wide space at the back of the building, which still witnesses the trooping of the colours and other ceremonies on state occasions. ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... of Demetrius, who retained immediate control over the citadel at Jerusalem and the fortified cities that had been built along the borders of Judea. On the appearance of Alexander Balas in 152 B.C. Demetrius I, in order to retain the loyalty of the Jews, permitted Jonathan to maintain a small standing army and to rebuild the fortifications of Jerusalem. To outbid his rival the impostor Alexander Balas conferred upon Jonathan the coveted honor of the high priesthood, thus making him both the civil and religious head ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent

... so? Where does he get it? Our fathers were so jealous of a standing army, that they scarcely would permit the organization and maintenance of any army! Where does he get the "clear and undeniable" power to use the force of the United States in the manner he there proposes? ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... England has raised since this continent was discovered; endowing and sustaining universities and other seminaries of learning. Conscious of the dynamic power of mind in action as the best of fortresses, Ohio keeps no standing army but that of her school-teachers, of whom she pays more than twenty thousand; she provides a library for every school-district; she counts among her citizens more than three hundred thousand men who can bear ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... standing army, upon which all revolutionary rulers can depend, and that always will continue their faithful support, unique in its sort and composition, exists in the bosom as well as in the extremities of this country. I mean, one hundred and ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... asking us to tax ourselves for their support. Give them a foreign empire like that of Spain in the Americas, and you run a danger of rendering them independent. The wealth arising from the revenues of Indostan would enable the Crown to keep up a standing army in time of peace, without the consent of Parliament. Moreover, the administration of these territories would give occasion for the creation of great numbers of offices and pensions, by means of which our ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward

... materials; a few could be abolished without offending any large interests and with the effect of punishing some small ones that had been niggard in contributing to the "campaign fund" which maintains the standing army of political workers and augments it whenever a battle is on. Accordingly, a revision of the tariff was in progress. To soothe Roebuck, they gave him a tariff schedule that would enable him to collect each year more than the total ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips

... efficient standing army for the plant, which prevents not only the mammalia from browsing on the leaves, but delivers it from the attacks of a much more dangerous enemy—the leaf-cutting ants. For these services the ants are not only securely housed by the plant, but are provided with a bountiful ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... very wreck of that once powerful patriot army swept away. In its stead, by nearly the same majority, the militia were increased to 16,000 men, and the regulars from 12,000 to 17,000—thus placing at the absolute control of the Commander-in-Chief, and the chiefs of the oligarchy, a standing army of 33,000 men. At the same period, Lord Clare (he had been made an earl in 1792), introduced his Convention Act, against the assemblage in convention of delegates purporting to represent the people. With Grattan only 27 of the Commons divided against this measure, well characterized as "the ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... Clovelly and Leith—influential still in their own estimations; still kicking up their heels behind, still stuttering and whispering into ears, still "going along by when they are talking sly." But there are no guerrillas now, no condottieri who can be hired: the empire has a paid and standing army, as an empire should. The North Country chiefs, so powerful in the clan warfare of bygone days, are generals now,—chiefs of staff. The captain-general, with a minute piece of Honey Dew under his tongue, sits in Number Seven. A new Number Seven,—with ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... whatever might be necessary to carry him to the western terminus of his Chinese railway. He had writings in French from the Czar's government which set this forth. Only, the Russian assurances were made contingent upon a standing army of "Ifs." "If" Storri should throw a railway across China; and "if" he should launch a line of steamships across the Pacific—the same fostered by the Washington Government with a subsidy—and "if" all and singular ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... kiss. At the Peace Conference in Tilsit, Napoleon, on the verge of disintegrating Prussia, met the beautiful Queen Louise of Prussia. Through her pleadings and the imprint of Napoleon's kiss on her classic arm Bonaparte granted Prussia the right to maintain a standing army of 12,000 men. That in itself did not mean much but it gave able and shrewd Prussian patriots the opportunity to ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves

... present economic conditions of a young nation such as Australia (an island continent containing an area of practically one-third of the British Empire whose population totals only some five millions of inhabitants), it is not considered advisable or even practicable to establish and maintain a standing army of sufficient strength to enable the nation to put its trust for its protection on such a standing army and, thereby, relieve the rest of its male inhabitants from the responsibility of service in case of ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon

... opposed to standing Armies, can more easily dispense with it, than a standing Army opposed to a national insurrection, for in that case, the troops are more scattered, and the divisions left more to themselves. But where an Army can be kept concentrated, the genius of the General takes a greater place, and supplies what is wanting in the spirit of the Army. Therefore generally ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz

... wanted to hold their power by a more lasting tenure than the choice of their constituents. It is impossible to account for their conduct and the measures they adopted on any other ground. But to accomplish that object, a standing army and a prodigal revenue must be raised; and to obtain these, pretences must be invented to deceive. Alarms of dangers that did not exist even in imagination, but in the direct spirit of lying, were spread abroad. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... contention is that we need a standing army to protect the country from foreign invasion. Every intelligent man and woman knows, however, that this is a myth maintained to frighten and coerce the foolish. The governments of the world, knowing each other's interests, do not invade each other. They have learned that ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... troops of the country were at this time absent in Flanders; and there was no standing army except the queen's guard and the garrisons kept in a few forts on the coast or the Scottish border. The royal navy was extremely small, and the revenues of the crown totally inadequate to the effort of raising it to any thing approaching a parity with the fleets of Spain. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... and passionately fond of the army. The Speaker produced the Mutiny-bill to him. "Oh Sir," said the lad, "but there is another act of parliament which perhaps you don't know of." The "person of dignity," as the newspapers call him, then was so ingenious as to harangue on the dangers of a standing army. The boy broke out, "Don't tell me of your privileges: what would have become of you and your privileges in the year forty-five, if it had not been for the army—and pray, why do you fancy I would betray my country? I have as much to lose as you have!" In short, this abominable young hector ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... before. King John, Edward I. and Edward III., had confiscated "alien priories." Richard II. and Henry IV. had made similar raids. In 1410, the House of Commons proposed the confiscation of all the temporalities held by bishops, abbots and priors, that the money might be used for a standing army, and to increase the income of the nobles and secular clergy. It was not done, but the attempt shows the trend of public opinion on the question of abolishing the monasteries. In 1416, Parliament dissolved the alien ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart

... and keeping a standing army within this kingdom in time of peace, without consent of Parliament, and quartering soldiers ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske

... were surrounded by lieutenants and captains and colonels, and as I watched them come and go with clank and clatter of spurs and swords, and military salutes at the door, and military cloaks thrown dramatically off and on, and gold braid shining, I began to think a big standing army worth the money to any country, on condition that it always went in uniform—on condition, I might now add, that this uniform is not khaki, then not yet heard of. When the old spare, grizzled General, always the last, appeared and all the other officers rose upon his entrance, ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... fleeting. Increasing numbers of troops were in New England; a fleet was bound for New York; war was inevitable; Virginia must be protected. Rather ingeniously he argued that a well-armed Virginia militia would eliminate the need for a standing army of British regulars in the colonies. "A well regulated Militia, composed of gentlemen and yeoman is the only Security of a free Government." To Bland, Robert Carter Nicholas, and Edmund Pendleton it was too soon for an armed militia. Such an action would be a ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education

... But before we could give the word [to retreat], the trainbands, taking advantage of our delay, fled first.—Swift. An argument for a standing army. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... enormous as the expense would be, when we have become properly aroused and awake to the huge and almost incredible burden which this disease, with its one hundred and fifty thousand deaths a year, is now imposing upon the United States,—five times as great as that of war or standing army in the most military-mad state in Christendom,—the community will ultimately assume this expense. So long, however, as our motto inclines to remain, "Millions for cure, but not one cent for prevention," ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... and enjoyments. (Luke, 9:25.) Wo to the nation where only jurists have a developed sense of the right, where political judgment and cultivated patriotism are the portion of only officials and placemen, where only the standing army has warlike courage, and the clergy only conscious religiousness; where parents leave all care for education to the teachers of the various branches of learning, and where physical vigor is to be found ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... down his paper, and was sitting glaring in front of him, "I was just thinking what a stunning book-cover you would make for a cheap novel, or how many thousands of bottles of beer your picture would sell in Hoboken. Hoboken, you know, is the headquarters of the German-American standing army, and your second largest naval base. Or ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... soon get out of the habit of speaking of farms; for there are no farms—only ranches. The particular ranch to which you have reference may be a ten-thousand-acre ranch, where they raise enough beef critters to feed a standing army, or it may be a half-acre ranch, where somebody is trying to make things home-like and happy for eight hens and a rooster; but a ranch it always is, and usually it is a model of its kind, too. The birds in California do not ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb

... are connected, to judge by your names, with all the English royalties; and very pretty names they are, too—Aline, Helene, Victoria, Beatrix. You must be much more English than you are German; and I suppose you live in a little old castle, and your brother has a standing army of twelve men, and some day you are to marry a Russian Grand-Duke, or whoever your brother's Prime Minister—if he has a Prime Minister—decides is best for the politics of your little toy kingdom. Ah! ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis

... of James at the Height His Foreign Policy His Plans of Domestic Government; the Habeas Corpus Act The Standing Army Designs in favour of the Roman Catholic Religion Violation of the Test Act Disgrace of Halifax; general Discontent Persecution of the French Huguenots Effect of that Persecution in England Meeting of Parliament; Speech of the King; an Opposition formed in ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Complete Contents of the Five Volumes • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... self; and this disinterestedness, in spite of his defects, is the secret of his popularity." His partner in exile, M. Wuczicz, is now commander of the military force and minister of the interior, in which latter office he succeeded Garashanin; the standing army is a mere skeleton force; but every Servian is a soldier, and bound to provide himself with arms, thus forming a national militia, of which the effective strength is estimated at little less than 100,000 men. The military command of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various

... dictated the hard chaffering on both sides the Channel at this important juncture; for during this tedious flint-paring, Antwerp, which might have been saved, was falling into the hands of Philip. It should never be forgotten, however, that the Queen had no standing army, and but a small revenue. The men to be sent from England to the Netherland wars were first to be levied wherever it was possible to find them. In truth, many were pressed in the various wards of London, furnished with red coats and matchlocks at ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... considered as mythical as possible? Moreover, the rulers of the world have spared no pains to imbue their people with false ideas upon this point. It is necessary to put forward some excuse for that terrible incubus upon the nations, the "standing army." ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... is said not to exceed 6,000 or 7,000 souls. Its whole income is derived from a moderate duty on tobacco; and its standing army (for it possesses this indispensable incident to political independence) is chiefly employed in vain attempts to prevent the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various

... been expected, but if the United States had had to deal with a Power anything like its own strength it would have found its own position intensely difficult. The war will probably have the effect of inducing their government to keep up a standing army and navy of a very superior kind to that of their present system. The recent warning of their admirable writer, Captain Mahau, will now have a chance of being listened to, but the Americans have only ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall

... yet unseen water-lily. There dart the lives of a day, ever-varying tactics fantastic. There, by the wet-mirrored osiers, the emerald wing of the kingfisher Flashes, the fish in his beak! there the dab-chick dived, and the motion Lazily undulates all thro' the tall standing army of rushes. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... nothing of Hector but his outside, and gave a loose to all the acrimony of his party rancour. Hearing the knight mention a company of licensed thieves, "What else," cried he, "is the majority of the nation? What is your standing army at home, that eat up their fellow-subjects? What are your mercenaries abroad, whom you hire to fight their own quarrels? What is your militia, that wise measure of a sagacious ministry, but a larger gang of petty ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... day several thousand natives had assembled on the opposite shore. By the aid of good telescopes we could discern forts and flags. The natives informed us that Guilpat had a standing army, well supplied with matchlocks, swords, and bows and arrows. They added that guns are not wanted to defend the island in case of need. This assertion we afterwards found, making allowance for a little ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat

... were always anxious to crush that rising paramount authority which had the power, and had always manifested the will, to interpose and prevent the free indulgence of their predatory habits—the free exercise of that weapon, a standing army, which the disorders incident upon the decline and fall of the Muhammadan army had put into their hands, and which a continued series of successful aggressions upon their neighbours could alone enable them to pay or keep under control. They seized with avidity any occasion ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman



Words linked to "Standing army" :   regular army, military, army, ground forces, military machine, war machine, armed services, armed forces



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