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Origins of the Second Amendment: The Creation of the
Constitutional Rights of Militia and of Keeping and Bearing Arms.
(excerpts)
Chapter 6: Ideological Concepts of Militia and the Right of Self-
Preservation, 1690-1776
John Kenneth Rowland, unpublished PhD dissertation, Ohio
State University, 1978. An intellectually honest and
historically accurate treatment of the Second Amendment and
eighteenth century militias. Rowland's dissertation is not
mentioned anywhere in the enormous volume of
pseudoscholarship
put out by the gun lobby and libertarians.
Rowland provided original historical research and analysis
on the pre-Second Amendment military— opposed to
personal right— meaning of "to bear arms," as
Appendix A to the
Potowmack Institute's
amicus curiae brief for the US Court of Appeals,
Fifth Circuit, September, 1999, in US v. Emerson.
Provided here are only the Introduction, the
summaries of parts 1, 2, and 3 from the original
text, and chapters 6 and 11.
The full text can be ordered from UMI Dissertation
Services, 1-800-521-0600. Order Number 7902218.
PART ONE: Origins of the Militia and the Right to Keep Arms
[SUMMARY]
Chapter 1: Origins of the English Militia, 1181-1663
Chapter 2: Origins of the Ideology of Militia and Arms and the Right to Keep Arms, 166-1689
PART TWO: Origins of the Colonial Militia
[SUMMARY]
Chapter 3: Colonial Adoption of English Militiary and Politicao-Military Practices, 1607-1689
Chapter 4: Imperial Reform of the Colonial Militias, 1674-1721
Chapter 5: Arms Bearing, Military Obligation, and Legislative Control of the Colonial Militia, 1721-1775
PART THREE: Origins of the Right to Bear Arms
[SUMMARY]
Chapter 6: Ideological Concepts of Militia and the Right of Self-Preservation [THIS FILE]
Chapter 7: Militia, the Right to Keep Arms, and Oppostion to the British Army, 1768-1774
Chapter 8: The Rise of the Revolutionary "New Militia," 1774-1776
Chapter 9: Birth of the Right to Berar Arms in the State Bills of Rights, 1776-1784
Chapter 10: Federal Constitutionalism and Attempted Militia Reform, 1776-1787
Chapter 11: The Bill of Rights, Militia, and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, 1787-1791
Other unpublished dissertations of interest (The full text can be ordered from UMI Dissertation
Services, 1-800-521-0600):
Mark Pitcavage, Ohio State, "An Equitable Burden: The Decline
of State Militias, 1783-1858" (1995). UMI order no. 9612259.
Kenneth Otis McCreedy, U of Ca., Berkeley, "Palladium of Liberty: The American Military System, 1815-1861," (1991). UMI order no. 9228764.
Other history not mentioned or rarely mentioned by the
gun lobby/libertarian pseudoscholars includes:
Jerry Cooper, The Rise of the National Guard (1997).
Chapter 1 treats the period from colonial America to the Civil
War.
Russell F. Weigley, History of the United States Army
(1967). Weigley's theme is the dual system of citizen soldiers
and professional army.
Dave R. Palmer,
1794: America, Its Army, and the Birth of the Republic (1994).
"Chapter 10, The Ghost of Cromwell", now in our
Archive
Lawrence Cress, Citizens in Arms (1982)
Lawrence Cress,
"An Armed Community: The
Origins and the Meaning of the Right to Bear Arms,"J. Am Hist., 1984. Now in our
Archive
John K. Mahon, History of the Militia and the National
Guard,(1983)
Also, a very readable, informative, historically accurate
perspective from a politician who is not a professional
historian but who did spend twelve years on the Senate Armed
Services Committee:
Gary Hart, The Minutemen (1998), chapter 4, "The Republic
and the Militia"
Books can be ordered from Amazon.com on our
Resources file.
Ideological Concepts of Militia and the Right of Self-
Preservation, 1690-1776
A good militia is of such importance to a nation, that
it is the chief part of the constitution of any free
government . . . [It] will always preserve the public
liberty . . . . The Lacedemonians continued eight
hundred years free, and in great honour, because they
had a good militia.
The right of the subject . . . of having arms for their
defence, suitable to their condition and degree, and
such as are allowed by law, is indeed a public
allowance under due restriction, of the natural right
of resistance and self-preservation, when the sanctions
of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain
the violence of oppression.
By the time American Patriots drafted their bills of
rights and first state constitutions in 1776, they had
been exposed to three different bodies of contemporary
thought concerning militia and arms. The ideology of
militia championed by the Country Opposition to the
English crown and governmental power coalesced with the
concept of natural law and natural rights and the ideas
of the newly reformed English militia to form a potent
though sometimes conflicting description of the value,
legitimacy, means, and ideal of collective military
activities in behalf of political liberties. Within
these three bodies existed many notions of the proper
composition of
page 216
military force, some of which Americans could identify
before 1774 with the colonial militia and afterwards
with their "new militia." In general terms they also
identified their "militia," in its various definitions,
as the only legitimate constitutional military force,
the proper means to employ the talents of citizen
soldiers, and the institutional counterpoise to
peacetime standing armies. After the 1740s Americans
became increasingly aware of two competing
institutional forms of militia existing in the
Anglo-American world. The model of universal military
obligation, expressed in colonial law and the English
constitutional tradition, conflicted with the model of
selective reserve forces, expressed most recently and
compellingly in the movement for English militia reform
which climaxed with the English Militia Act of 1757.
Debate over English reform generated considerable
polemical debate on the militia and its role in society
which included proposals for American reform. The
concept of militia outside the polemical debates held
an important place in theoretical discussions of the
state and economic life, in addition to the militia's
political importance. Thus, writers such as Adam Smith
and John Millar analyzed the strengths and weaknesses
of the militia in the various forms. Finally Americans
had been exposed to the philosophical concepts of
natural rights, finding special applicability in the
right of self-preservation by individuals and societies
of themselves and their liberties, and the right of
resistance to tyrannical government. Sir William
Blackstone especially tied these concepts to the
constitutional right of possessing arms and American
Patriots tied both to the concepts of militia. Without
these
page 217
essential elements, the right to bear arms of 1776
would have had a more superficial and transitory
meaning, a mere justification of armed insurrection,
than it actually had. They provided the deeper
significance to the right which made it a fundamental
constitutional concept.
The ideology of militia achieved its classic and first
full-scaled development in the 1690s as part of the
English Radical Whig reaction to Parliament's approval
of a permanent establishment of the army during
peacetime. The notion of militia as a constitutional
means to counteract the debilitating influences of a
professional army on English society had first been
enunciated as early as 1648 when the Long Parliament
first drew an institutional distinction between the
"militia" of England— the county forces— and
the New Model Army. As shown in Chapter One,
Parliament's challenge to the military prerogative of
the crown by the Militia Ordinance of 1642 had
initiated a tremendous amount of writing to justify the
usurpation on the grounds of constitutional precedent
and the rights of Parliament. Toward the end of that
controversy, James Harrington had introduced and
synthesized the Humanist and Classical Republican
traditions of the citizen soldier with the concept of
arms. Harrington had written Oceana in
criticism of the military practices and despotism of
Cromwell's Protectorate and in praise of the virtues
and military potential of the independent landholding
gentry of England. His writings had provided the means
to transmit the political and military ideas of
Machiavelli to England.
3
Harrington's intellectual descendants, called variously
the Neo-Harringtonians, Commonwealthmen, Radical Whigs,
and Country opposition
page 218
began developing these ideas in the late seventeenth
century. To them must be given responsibility for
formulating the concept of the militia as counterpoise
to the army which quickly was transmitted to the
colonies in the early eighteenth century. Their
concepts were not entirely original. They depended
heavily in certain areas upon the Machiavellian and
Harringtonian notions of the societal value of citizen
soldiers and the harmfulness of mercenary troops, and
the notion of the mythical English Ancient
Constitutional practices and institutions. In
addition, much of the Humanist, Classical Republican,
and Harringtonian corpus of ideas depended upon the
concept of political power operating through popular
and legislative channels. The specter of potentially
unlimited prerogative dominated the writings of the
Commonwealthmen. In England where the Glorious
Revolution had synthesized King and Parliament, the
radical cry against independent executive power proved
futile. In America, however, it proved an effective,
dominating, and ultimately dangerous means of
opposition to the theoretically unchecked prerogative
of the governors, apparently unaffected by Parliament's
victory in 1688.
4
Although agitation for reform of the Restoration
militia statues and opposition to the royal army
politically and ideologically had begun in the 1670s,
full-scale polemical writing did not begin until 1697.
The army had survived the Glorious Revolution, and
though it had been brought under the statutory
regulation of the annual Mutiny Acts, it still
presented to the opposition the threat of unlimited,
despotic power. To Robert Molesworth, European
experience warned of the ultimate danger of
professional armies. French and German princes
page 219
had made the mistake of "esteeming Soldiers the only
true Riches." This "mischievous Custom" had the
consequence of making warfare and destruction
"absolutely necessary." Particularly instructive for
Molesworth's audience in 1694 was the fate of Denmark.
The Danish court had established a standing army of
foreign mercenaries so dangerous that they threatened
to enslave both the nobility, which could no longer
effectively oppose the crown, and the people, who
lacked the means of opposition and who consequently
lost the desire and the capacity for revolution, the
ultimate form of resistance to despotism.
5
Commonwealth principles lay at the base of the militia
and anti-army polemics in the 1690s and in the
eighteenth century. Molesworth himself in 1721
published the most explicit statement in the preface to
his translation of Francis Hotoman's 1574 work,
Franco-Gallia, a treatise on the legal and
constitutional structure of medieval France destroyed
by the use of absolutist kings. To Molesworth, the
medieval French political system represented the
English and European ideal of the uncorrupted "gothic"
constitution, balancing the powers of communities into
a stable society. "A real Whig," he wrote, "is one who
is exactly for keeping up to the Strictness of the true
old Gothic Constitution, under the Three Estates of
King (or queen) lords and Commons; the Legislature
being seated in all Three together." Thus a "true
Whig" or "Commonwealthman" was not, as their enemies
claimed, a rebel seeking to restore republicanism and
civil war, but a friend of liberty. Englishmen, in
fact, had not taken "up Arms against their Prince" in
either 1642 or 1688 out of a desire for
page 220
personal gain, but only "when constrain'd to it by a
necessary Care of their Liberties and true
Constitution." That true constitution might allow
standing armies in wartime but rarely during periods of
peace because it was always "much more desirable and
secure to govern by Love and common Interest, than by
Force." Even a Commonwealthman might accept a
temporary peacetime "Whiggish Army" to stabilize
domestic social and political life disturbed by
executive tyranny as long as the army acted as "the
Guardian of our Liberties." Generally, however, the
power of the much remain in the hands of the people.
6
Molesworth's emphasis upon the "invincible Militia"
composed of "wise and valiant Citizens" who were
"Proprietors of the Estates they fight for" reveals one
of the first ideological references to a right to use
arms. A well regulated militia, he observed, would
make peacetime armies unnecessary, discourage foreign
invasion, "and secure effectually our Liberties against
any King that should have a mind to invade them at
home, which perhaps was the Reason some of our late
Kings were so averse to it." Militia in the 1720s, as
in the 1690s, was not well regulated, being composed of
servants, untrained men, and officers of little estate
and low reputation. To deny men the opportunity to
perfect themselves in military drill was to deny them
their birthright. "The arming and training of
alltheFreeholders of England,"
declared Molesworth, "is our undoubted ancient
Constitution, and consequently our Right." The right
claimed by Molesworth clearly implied the right to
military defense, not to private use of weapons.
7
All these Commonwealth principles permeated the writing
of the Radical Whigs in the 1690s. The relaxation of
state censorship in
page 221
1697 at the end of the War of the League of Augsburg
combined with the failure of the ministry to disband
the army or reform the militia to give impetus to a
massive outburst of polemical activity. The cyclical
nature of history served as a fundamental assumption to
anti-army writers. John Trenchard warned the readers
of his Short History of Standing Armies in 1698
that "Men in the same Circumstances will do the same
things call them by what names of distinction you
please. A government is a mere piece of Clockwork; and
having such Springs and Wheels, must act after such a
Manner: . . . therefore the Art is to constitute it so
that it must move to the public Advantage." The army
represented a case in point. Armies might fulfill
certain needs of government, but throughout history
mercenary troops, especially those kept during
peacetime, had endangered society. Professional
"standing troops lacked virtue and courage, led
debauched lives, and owned loyalty only to their
commanders and paymasters. Kings lay as much in the
power of a hired army as the nobility and people.
Caesars had risen to the throne of imperial Rome on the
basis of armies, and Caesars had been deposed by that
force. Standing armies had been so unreliable and such
a corrupting influence in the past societies that
Trenchard could see no hope for England. If the army
still in pay in 1698 "does not make us Slaves," he
warned, "we are the only People upon Earth in such
Circumstances that ever escap'd it with the 4th part of
their number." William III's virtue might save England
from its peril, observed Trenchard, but "'tis a most
miserable thing to have no other Security for our
Liberty, than the Will of a Man, tho the most just Man
Living: for that is not a free Government." A more
reliable
page 222
solution was institutional. The militia could provide
the perfect counterpoise to the army in the clockwork
of government. Other Commonwealthmen echoed and
amplified this cry.
8
Andrew Fletcher considered the problems in detail in
this Discourses Concerning Militia's and Standing
Armies, a pamphlet which quickly crossed the
Atlantic to influence military affairs in Virginia. In
the earlier history of Europe, monarchs had been
limited in their use of force. Placing "the Sword in
the hands of the Subject," Fletcher noted, had been
"Essential to the Liberties of the People." Absolutist
rulers, however, had seized exclusive military power by
hiring mercenaries. Although England had escaped this
fate thus far by controlling military appropriations
through parliamentary grant, European experience showed
that "he that is arm'd is always Master of the Purse of
him that is unarm'd." Security against this form of
usurpation was not inherent in any government, nor
security that "these Standing Forces" would not
eventually "suppress the Liberties of the People."
Before the 1690s the only "real security" had been the
constitutional prohibition on standing armies and the
common law obligation of arming the people. During the
Restoration, however, Parliament had recognized the
King's sole command of all military forces, which had
created the potential for tyranny. The solution, just
as Trenchard had concluded, required a "well-regulated
Militia," capable of providing safety from invasion and
the "Danger of Slavery at home."
9
Fletcher's militia did not resemble the English county
forces of the 1690s nor even the old trained bands, so
much as some colonial militias and the militia which
had been proposed by Machiavelli. Rather
page 223
than allowing "the Scum of the People" to compose the
county forces, Fletcher wanted to revive the "many
excellent and wholesome Laws" for exercising "the whole
people." Undoubtedly referring to medieval statutes
for universal arming and musters which had been
rescinded early in the seventeenth century, he
overlooked the fact that training had not been part of
the common law tradition. He did, however, refer to a
"Judicious Author" who, like Machiavelli (if it was not
he), "well observed . . . That 'tis easier to exercise
a greater number than a less," more convenient to have
a widespread force of trained soldiers able to answer a
call to rendezvous in small numbers at a given place
than a small militia which must travel far at great
inconvenience. "By this means," he argued, " Choice
will be greater, as it ought to be, so that Trade,
Manufactures and Husbandry may be as little disturbed
as possible."
10
In the final analysis, Fletcher emphasized in the
revised Scottish edition of his tract, "a good militia
is of such importance to a nation, that it is the chief
part of the constitution of any free government . . .
[It] will always preserve the public liberty." The
Spartans in fact had maintained their freedom for eight
centuries "because they had a good militia."
11
The common law medieval military obligation appealed to
the Commonwealthmen. Their "militia," however,
comprised not merely the county forces as part of the
larger system of defense but the whole military
potential of the nation, the posse regni in the
widest sense, the power of the nation. Algernon
Sidney's posthumously published Discourse Concerning
Government— the "textbook" of the American
Revolution, according to Caroline Robbins— argued
that "no State can be said to stand upon a steady
Foundation, except those whose
page 224
strength is in their own Soldiery, and
the body of their People."
12
Another Radical Whig, Walter Moyle, placed the concept
of the citizen soldier in the context of England's
Ancient Constitution and of the Gothic Balance.
It is universally true [he wrote], that where-ever the
Militia is, there is or will be Government in a short
time; and therefore the Institutors of this Gothic
Balance (which was established in all Parts of
Europe) made the Militia to consist of the same
parts as the Government, here the King was General, the
Lords by virtue of their Castles and Honours, the great
Commanders, and the Freeholder by their Tenures the
Body of the Army; so that it was next to impossible for
an Army thus constituted to act to the disadvantage of
the Constitution.
13
Only by extraordinary accident or willful interference
could such a system collapse. Yet, Moyle argued, "the
Conduct of the Court in industriously enervating this
Force" in the 1680s by attempts to "disarm the People,
and make the Militia useless" had lead directly to the
creation of a standing army in England, and, he might
have added, to the enunciation of the right to keep
arms. Arms must remain the hands of the people: the
people must control the power of the sword.
14
How could the English militia fulfill these goals? Its
organization was deficient, the units filled with
"scum," and, lacking trained and competent officers, it
was virtually untrained and seriously lacking in arms.
The Commonwealthmen believed only Parliament itself
could propose reforms, but, under the pressure of
polemical debate, they steadily make clear "what is
amiss" so that the legislators could act. Most wanted
universal service obligation, general arming, and
effective training, especially of the freeholders of
the shires. Andrew Fletcher
page 225
proposed four training camps for young men, to last one
year for those who had to receive public support and
two for those who could pay their own expenses. The
camps would teach use of arms, horsemanship, and
reading (especially history and military annals). They
would be run entirely on military lines, with their own
officers, court martial system, but no clergymen—
forcing the youths to aid each other and psychological
and internal disturbances. Walter Moyle believed that
laws against shooting had to be revised and that
soldiers disbanded from the standing army should help
compose the militia. National territory, to be
enlarged, Moyle argued, required an enlarged population
with "the sword put in their hands" to create "a brave
militia . . . of men spirited by freedom, plenty, and
property."
15
One anonymous writer urged that all that was really
necessary was to enforce current laws and impose
stricter penalties.
16
Others believed the law needed to be modernized,
reducing the size of the militia and increasing
training from four days a year to a month or six weeks.
17
Finally, John Toland argued that servants be excluded
entirely from the county forces, and that freemen be
trained one afternoon a week and mustered in units
quarterly. All freemen became eligible for personal
service, and all others chargeable for financial
support. Officers would be men of estate who would
rotate every three years to provide experience for all
eligible men. In case the nation did not give up its
restrictions on foreign service, volunteers could be
raised from the trained militia.
18
The image of militia which emerged in the 1690s was not
entirely one of an ideal, utopian force, capable of
feats worthy of Roman legions.
page 226
The opponents of the Commonwealthmen presented a strong
counterimage of militia, reflecting its actual
operation of England.
19
No militia, one "D. F." argued, had ever been very
successful without the assistance of regular troops.
If militia were "regulated and Disciplin'd, I
say they may enslave us as well as an Army; and if not,
hey cannot be able to defend us."
20
Rather than serve in war, county gentlemen and
freeholders preferred to hire substitutes and remain at
home. "They love their Country," another
pamphleteer contended, "but Education had in
great Measure taken them off from the Vanity of
admiring woodenlegs and broken
pates."
21
Daniel Defoe argued that the very concept of a
well-regulated militia was a "BlackSwan," and "unheard-of thing."
22
This anti-militia image was summed up in the classic
lines of John Dryden in his Cymon and Iphigenia
in 1700:
The country rings around with loud alarms,
And raw in fields the rude militia swarms;
Mouths without hands; maintained at vast expense,
In peace a charge, in war a weak defense:
Stout once a month they march, a blustering band,
And ever, but in times of need, at hand.
This was the morn when, issuing on the guard,
Drawn up in rank and file they stood prepared
Of seeming arms to make a short essay,
Then hasten to be drunk, the business of the day.
23
The image of militia which emerged so fully articulated
in England as a result of the standing army controversy
played an increasingly important role on both sides of
the Atlantic. In Virginia, as shown in Chapter Four,
James Blair in 1705 drew explicitly on the works of
Andrew Fletcher for arguments to attack Governor
Nicholson's policy toward the militia. Robert Beverley
also attacked the policy as the genesis of a colonial
standing army, a charge repeated in 1716 against
Governor
page 227
Spotswood. The ideology had less immediate influence
in the other colonies. The controversy against the
army continued to influence polemicists in England
during the eighteenth century and, through their
writings the American colonists. Old and new
Commonwealthmen continued their defense of the citizen
soldier; their solution to the dangers of professional
armies lay in a militia indoctrinated by "Whiggish"
ideas of liberty.
The principle which underlay this "Whiggish" militia
were neatly sketched by John Trenchard and Thomas
Gordon in 1722 in one of Cato's Letters
published in a London newspaper and reprinted widely in
the colonies. "Military virtue," they wrote, was the
product of liberty.
In free Countries, as People work for themselves, so
they fight for themselves: But in arbitrary countries .
. . [a tyrant] has no Resource; his Subjects having
neither Arms, nor courage, nor Reason to fight for him:
He has no Support but his standing Forces . . . In
attacks upon a free State, every Man will fight to
defend it, because every Man has something to defend in
it. He is in love with his Condition, his Ease, and
Property, and will venture his Life rather than lose
them; because with them he loses all the Blessings of
Life.
24
Therefore, it was essential to make use of the natural
interests and virtues of the people in defense in order
to avoid the dangers inherent in mercenary armies. "In
free States," they concluded, "every Man being a
soldier, or quickly made so, they improve in a War, and
every Campaign fight better and better." Trenchard and
Gordon illustrated their essay with proofs from
classical and medieval history of small states which
had successfully opposed and every conquered large
nations defended by mercenaries.
25
Several other works before mid-century enhanced this
image of the militia. Military power, according to
Roger Acherley's Britannic
page 228
Constitution, was a matter of supreme importance
in any nation and must be controlled by "the
NationalPower." The true functions of
military forces, he contended, were "to Protect the
land, and to Defend, and Repel Foreign Injuries and
Invasions, and to Suppress Domestick Rebellions, and
Insurrections; all which Centre rather in Defensive
than in Offensive Wars." In order to prevent "such
NationalArmies" from subverting the
constitution, "StandingLandForces, in Times of Peace' had to be avoided.
Even Parliament might be unable to compel these forces
to obey its will and might even be dispersed by the
army. Although Acherley did not offer the militia as a
direct solution to this problem of untrustworthy land
forces, he did demonstrate later in his work the power
Parliament had exercised when it took the command of
militia away from Charles I.
26
The militia, if properly settled in the medieval,
pre-Norman, or classical manner, Thornhagh Gurdon
argued, could provide a means to eliminate peacetime
armies. He referred the readers of his History of
the High Court of Parliament to the reign of
Athelston to prove that "the settling of Militia
according to Mens Estates" had existed in Saxon England
and offered an example from the Ancient Constitution
for modern emulation. Thomas Gordon's translations of
the works of Tacitus in 1728 and Sallust in 1744
emphasized the dangers of great armies during peace and
war and the oppressions and severities of civil wars.
"Power unrestrained, and Liberty uncontrolled," he
editorialized, "are both apt to make Men wanton and
insolent." The use of force always brings "the Contest
to the Decision of the Sword." Once fighting begins,
it is difficult to stop, giving rise to military
commanders such as Cromwell who overcome their civil
masters and establish their own bases of power.
page 229
In the long run, power itself must be controlled to
prevent abuse, James Ralph's History of England
showed that the greatest abuses had come from the
rulers themselves. The anti-army writing of the 1690s
had proved to him that "A free People . . . Has a
Right to maintain that Freedom by the Sword" even
against "their perfidious Governors." Unless the
people were armed, armies could rule them. Englishmen
before the seventeenth century had avoided armies by
"their Custom of Friborghes, or
Frankpledges, Inquests, Oaths, and
Penalties, Tenures by
Knight-Services, CommissionsofArray, &c. Which being of approv'd Benefit, and
Equality, were much more suitable to the Genius and
Interest of the People, than a Standing Army." The
Ancient Constitution's placing of military power in the
hands of the people and their institutions thus
continued to offer an alternative to the dangerous
modern military system.
27
Even Viscount Bolingbroke, the Tory opponent of
governmental power, adopted some of the Whiggish
anti-army sentiments. He was especially critical of
apologists of centralized government who defended the
army as necessary to defend Liberty. "Nothing can be
more absurd," he wrote in A Dissertation Upon
Parties, "than to employ, in defense of liberty, an
instrument so often employed to destroy it." In his
Remarks Upon the History of England, Bolingbroke
described those dangers. "All standing armies," he had
discovered, "for whatsoever purpose instituted, or in
what soever habit clothed, may be easily made the
instruments of factions." Yet, he observed, "if a
spirit of liberty be kept up in a free nation, it will
be kept up in the army of that nation; and . . . when
it is thus kept up, though the spirit of faction may do
great hurt, it cannot complete the public ruin," Thus,
an army properly composed and
page 230
controlled could maintain liberty; but an army was
susceptible to faction and danger to the nation. This
"same truth," concluded Bolingbroke, "was again
confirmed to us no longer ago than" 1688.
28
Apologists for the army had gained considerable power
by the 1740s as a result of renewed European warfare
and the success of the army in belying the dire
predictions about its conduct made by Country
polemicists. After 1739 and especially after the
miserable performance of the militia against the
Scottish uprising of 1745, military reformers began to
pressure Parliament to transform the country forces
into a modern auxiliary and reserve to the army. As
long as the militia "remains upon the ancient footing,"
complained one author, all attempts "to make the
militia effectual or more useful . . . must meet with
the greatest Opposition." Maintaining an army large
enough to satisfy domestic, colonial, and European
needs would be prohibitively expensive and dangerous.
The same anonymous author found a solution in a
"selected Militia" of well-affected and paid part-time
soldiers to serve in concert with the army. Another
suggested that 18,000 volunteer militiamen could
adequately augment 17,000 regulars during wartime.
29
These plans for an army reserve on the model of
Cromwell's "new Militia" evoked a response from the
descendants of the Commonwealthmen. Colonel Samuel
Martin revived the Classical Republican and Ancient
Constitutional image of universal military obligation
in this Plan for Establishing and Disciplining a
National Militia in Great Britain, Ireland, and . . .
America in 1745. He agreed that the militia needed
to be reformed, but not as a reserve too closely
identified with the army. Rather he concluded that the
militias of England and America should be
page 231
reorganized into two complementary bodies, a "superior
militia" composed of men of property and a "subordinate
militia" of common men and servants which together
would create a formidable institution. Martin
advocates popular election of commissioned officers, a
procedure not yet revived in the colonies. Like
Machiavelli, whom he cited as a source for many of his
ideas, Martin argued that men, not riches, were the
sinews of war and that a free state had nothing to fear
from placing arms in the hands of the people. He
opposed making war a profession and advocated that
wartime soldiers revert to their civilian occupations
at war's end. Militia, thus, would replace the army
during peacetime. Americans became aware of the
arguments for reform when Martin's pamphlet was
reprinted in the colonies.
30
This initial polemical activity for militia reform,
however, had little influence on Parliament, especially
after the end of the War of the Austrian Succession in
1748. That year in France Montesquieu published his
Spirit of the Laws, a work which received
considerable attention in England and America. Though
it had little direct influence in the militia issue, it
did contain favorable comments on the role of the
citizen soldier in society. Although the potential for
abuse of power in monarchies made it dangerous to
concentrate civil and military responsibilities in the
same officials, the same was not true for republics.
In republican societies, as Englishmen had discovered,
the danger lay in establishing an exclusively military
interest. To allow military professionals to enforce
civil law was incompatible with republicanism. Since
in a republic he declared, "a person takes up arms only
with a view to defend his country and its laws," civil
and military duties could safely
page 232
be placed in the same hands. Citizens had no separate
military interest, but "because he is a citizen,"
concluded Montesquieu, "he makes himself for a while a
soldier," then returns to his civilian pursuits.
31
Opponents of extreme transformation of the militia,
which would have created a county force with definite
military interest, mobilized their polemical strength
against a reform bill introduced in Parliament in 1752.
William Thornton published an important tract, which
was reprinted in New York the following year, in an
attempt to influence the proceedings. The
Counterpoise sought to reunite the
Commonwealthmen's detestation of the army and praise
for the militia with the realities of the
mid-eighteenth century. He agreed that "Standing
Armies have ruined all countries that have had them,
without a counterpoize," and argued that "a well
regulated Militia" could "at little or no expense"
provide "a sufficient Power to controul and ballance"
the army. The militia, he believed, could both
supplement the army during emergencies and render
professional soldiers safe to government and society.
Citing Machiavelli for examples of the consequences of
an uncontrollable army, Thornton praised the Swiss
militia which had defeated the Duke of Burgundy's army,
the Genoese who had turned back the Austrians, and the
New Englanders who had captured Louisbourg. The
English militia could achieve similar feats only of
Parliament modernized arming and training requirements
and improved the quality of commissioned officers.
Then 150,000 militiamen would cost only as much as
6,000 regulars, allowing the army to be reduced to
50,000 men.
32
Other writers joined Thornton in influencing
Parliament. Lord Sackville's Treatise Concerning
the Militia agreed that army and militia
page 233
must coexist. Strong county forces could provide men
for continental operations and protect England from
invasion and insurrection. "For them," he declared,
"every Man being enabled to defend his Property, all
the coasts of Britain will be covered with Soldiers,
who fight not for Pay but for Property, for their
Families, for their Religion, and Liberties." An enemy
who managed to land "must fight every Inch of Ground,
and still find People in Arms against him wherever he
goes." Sackville urged that the militia consist of men
of property, ranked according to holding in infantry
and cavalry units. From this "general Militia" would
be chosen a "select or standing Militia" for immediate
use. However, he recognized and accepted the medieval
constitutional restrictions on the area of service. No
one, he repeated, must cause the militia "to march out
of their respective Counties UPON ANY PRETEXT, OR BY
ANY COMMAND WHATSOEVER; upon pain of being declared
ENEMIES to their Country, and guilty of HIGH TREASON,"
Finally, Sackville made his Commonwealth bias most
clear by favorably quoting from Algernon Sidney's work
that England's strength lay in "the body of their own
People."
33
Samuel Squire presented the opposite view in his
Enquiry into the Foundation of the English
Constitution in 1753 after the militia bill had
died. He argued that the "standing Army, as it is at
present constituted, paid, commanded, and recruited,
will always be a guard to our internal tranquillity"
and a support for allies in war and peace negotiations.
The ancient German and Anglo-Saxon Kings had needed "a
regular and well disciplined body of militia," but the
time had passed when "all the native freemen were
soldiers." The present army, he concluded, "is the
army of the people, more properly than of the king."
34
page 234
Despite voices such as Squire's, the predominant tone
of ideological argument and political discourse
unconnected with the Parliamentary bills favored the
militia over the army. David Hume and Francis
Hutcheson, Scottish intellectuals outside the political
atmosphere of the militia debate and well known in
America, helped carry forward the concept of militia
derived from James Harrington. Hutcheson in A
System of Moral Philosophy argued the virtues of
the militia as a whole and of the citizen soldier over
the dangers to society of the standing army. Hume
described "modern armies" in the traditional
Commonwealth manner as comprising "a low rascally set
of people." In his essay on the "Idea of a Perfect
Commonwealth," Hume modeled the perfect militia "in
imitation of that in Swisserland" except that 20,000
men would serve each year in a training camp to
acquaint them with military life. By such writings as
these, Americans remained aware of the importance which
the militia retained outside the polemical debates.
35
From 1752 to 1756, Parliament rejected or allowed to
die a number of proposals to reform the hundred year
old militia system. By 1754, war had broken out in the
colonies and was imminent in Europe, requiring the
mobilization of large numbers of men as a defense
against invasion of England and for operations in
America and on the continent. The potential of the
militia had to be tapped to avoid the massive
expenditures required to keep garrisons at home. The
solution, declared a writer in 1756, was
"Self-defence"— "The Business of all." Parliament
must eliminate the laws against hunting so that men
could learn the use of firearms which, in turn, would
enhance their "love of Liberty and Independence, along
with a Confidence in Parliament."
36
page 235
Studying in London and following Parliamentary affairs
in 1756, John Dickinson was struck by the incongruity
of the ministry's defeat of a militia bill passed
unanimously by Commons. It "astonished" him "to hear
from Englishmen" some of the arguments against the bill
urging the advantages and necessity for keeping native
and foreign mercenaries. He was particularly upset to
hear "that a militia woud introduce a military spirit,
woud destroy that commercial one which is now become a
part of the English Constitution, & [that] in a little
time, it woud be necessary to make laws for suppressing
it." Dickinson's reading of English history and
anti-army literature had created for him the image of
the militia as the true English constitutional military
force, and image shared by other Americans.
37
Discussion of the militia naturally brought to public
attention the seventeenth-century controversies between
Charles I and Parliament, Cromwell's use of militia,
and the ideological arguments of the Restoration and
Glorious Revolution. Mid-eighteenth-century military
developments added another element: the need for a
strong land force to oppose European standing armies.
The interaction of these influences produced some
interesting proposals. Most advocates of a reformed
militia recognized modern military problems and sought
to cast their ideas accordingly. Very few tracts took
a blatantly libertarian anti-army stance but considered
a "judicious mixture" of militia and regulars
compatible with their ideological beliefs. Mid-century
writings advocated a militia to supplement the regular
army and free it from manning home garrisons against
invaders and from duties of suppressing local
disturbances and insurrections.
38
page 236
The parliamentary act passed in 1757 established a new
militia, a force of part-time soldiers for local
defense and home duties, to be called out during
emergencies and organized and armed as regulars. The
act reduced the number of men obliged to serve,
assessed the shires for proportional quotes of men, and
charged parishes with finding men and arms. Medieval
restrictions still applied: the militia could not be
used outside the realm. Major problems common both to
the English and colonial militias involved selection of
men from service and appointment of officers. One
disgruntled writer in 1762 considered the idea of
conscripting men if voluntary enlistments failed as
"ridiculous, impracticable, and carrying an utopian
idea of property and patriotism into the ranks."
Others criticized the act as a poor compromise.
39
Thus by the 1760s two institutional images of militia
had been established and, in England, had partially
merged. The original constitutional image had
developed during the seventeenth century on the model
of the English county forces and the American colonial
forces, representing universal military obligation and
combined civil and military functions. Late
seventeenth-century Commonwealthmen had modified this
image, transforming the county forces from their
theoretical and ideological position as the sum of
English military power to a mere counterpoise to the
standing army. Eighteenth-century military reformers
had synthesized portions of the Commonwealth model with
institutional practices based upon Cromwell's New
Militia and the Restoration militia acts, adding the
concept of the county forces as reserves and
auxiliaries to the army. Even libertarian reformers in
the mid-eighteenth-century recognized the institutional
advantages of some of these
page 237
characteristics. The 1757 statute actually represented
a compromise. The militia retained many of the
constitutional features— it could not be employed
outside the realm nor within the realm except for the
three functions of repelling invasions, suppressing
insurrections, and enforcing the law. And though the
new, smaller, and more highly trained militia companies
were permanently associated with particular regiments
of the regular army, the militia remained a separate
organization serving as rear area forces. During the
colonial period, Americans generally advocated the
Commonwealth or constitutional image, or some
combination of the two based upon actual institutional
characteristics of the colonial militias. Only at the
beginning of the Revolution, as shown in the next
chapter, Americans began to assimilate the reserve
model into their ideology and their military reform
plans.
During the eighteenth century Americas also assimilated
the ideology of natural rights. The philosophy of
natural rights, especially the concept of the right of
individuals and societies to self-preservation,
represented a major philosophical, intellectual, and
ideological influence on American concepts of militia
and the right to bear arms. Nature, according to Basil
Willey, had been a "controlling idea" in Western
thought since classical times. Since then, as well,
had existed the notion of a body of natural law
governing human relations which transcended the course
of ordinary, man-made statues. Until the Renaissance,
moreover, this concept had been inseparable from that
of God. Only after the sixteenth century did the
political and juristical elements become distinct from
the theological, being incorporated into an independent
and rationalist system of thought. It is the emergence
of
page 238
this system which endowed the subsidiary concept of
self-preservation with its sense of absolute right. In
addition the parallel development of the "state of
nature" theory to explain the origin of society and
government enhanced the concept by identifying it with
the most fundamental and original rights of
individuals. At issue here was the philosophical
connotation of that right and its transmission to
America.
40
Among the earliest modern exponents of a secular law of
nature and concept of self-preservation was the
seventeenth-century Dutch politician and humanist Hugo
Grotius. His treatise on The Law of War and
Peace represented one of the earliest attempts to
establish a system of law to regularize relations among
European monarchies. Published in Paris in 1625 and
Amsterdam in 1631, the book went through forty-four
Latin editions and twenty-three translations before the
end of the eighteenth century, five into English. The
treatise rested on the fundamental basis of the
lawfulness of war. Paraphrasing Cicero, Grotius
identified as "the first principles of nature those in
accordance with which every animal from the moment of
its birth has regard for itself and is impelled to
preserve itself, to have zealous consideration for its
own condition and for those things which tend to
preserve it." War, thus, being a means of preserving
life and limbs and keeping or acquiring useful things,
could not be inconsistent with the principles of
nature. "Right reason," on the other hand, "and the
nature of society," which have greater importance than
unregulated nature which no longer exists, impose a
vital qualification: force may be used, but not force
which is in conflict with society itself, that is,
"which attempts to take away the rights of another."
Self-defense,
page 239
Grotius found, was a flexible principle, allowing
individuals and societies to justify the use of force
to protect lives and property and to wage war lawfully.
But self-preservation could not be an absolute right
free from external regulation.
41
Other European legal commentators followed this line of
reasoning, as Charles F. Mullett has shown, by placing
self-preservation among the most essential rights
belonging to individuals and societies. Significantly,
Samuel Pufendorf's Of the Law of Nature and
Nations, J. J. Burlamaqui's Principles of
Natural and Political Law, and Vatell's Law of
Nations or Principles of the Law of Nature
established the concept as "fundamental law," based
upon nature and reason, which existed outside and took
precedence over civil law. This, under various
circumstances, a person could defend himself by killing
an attacker who threatened his life despite statues
prohibiting murder. This very concept of self-defense
was embodied in English common law.
42
English law and writings on natural rights influenced
eighteenth-century Anglo-American intellectual
development to a greater degree than did Continental
works. Here again, Mullett has demonstrated that the
concept of self-preservation occupied an enduring
position in the hierarchy of natural rights. Sir
Francis Bacon included it with the rights of liberty
and of "the society of man and wife" as three
principles derived from natural law which transcended
both common and statutory law in England. William
Prinne, on the other hand, found the source of this
right in both common and natural law, in mutual
reinforcement.
43
page 240
Thomas Hobbes, in the mid-seventeenth century,
emphasized the overwhelming importance of the concept
of
self-preservation by identifying it as the only
absolute, unconditional right arising from nature, with
all other duties being derived from that concept. He
offered the first serious intellectual challenge to the
entire philosophy of natural rights and fundamental
law, grounding his own theory in the positive civil law
of man and the coercive power of government. His
concept of self-preservation denied the right of
revolution and armed resistance to duly constitute
authority but placed the survival of the controlling
elements of society higher than the survival of
individual or community liberty. Hobbes's speculations
on human nature, society and government did not gain
much popularity among Englishmen, being assaulted and
rebutted by legions of critics. But this basic concept
itself persisted in English thinking and received the
best known and most influential restatement from the
work of John Locke.
44
John Locke's Second Treatise of Government
perpetuated the right of self-preservation in
Anglo-American political theory. Unlike Hobbes, Locke
followed the traditional pattern of treating the
concept as only one of some number of basic rights
derived from nature, and of denying its absolute
quality. Only in the mythical state of nature or the
very real state of war, he wrote, could every person be
the "Executioner of the Law of Nature"; only there
ruled the right of self-defense, the "Right to destroy
that which threatens me with Destruction." In society
and in peace, on the other hand, the concept of
property defined right and obligation. Property, in
Locke's theory, encompassed not simply one's estate but
also one's life and personal liberty, and the rules
page 241
of society provided all lawful remedies for abuse.
Only when abuse such as royal prerogative threatened
"Life, Liberty, and Estate," and consequently the
stability of society, could force be applied. "In all
States and Conditions," Locke emphasized, "the true
remedy of Force with Authority, is to oppose
Force to it," not the strength of individuals
but of the people as a whole under proper authority
whether it be civil or natural law. Many people, he
added, had "mistaken the force of Arms for the consent
of the People," failing to recognized the collective
nature of proper resistance to abuse. Here, then, is
no justification of an unrestricted right of
self-protection or retaliation by individuals, but a
closely regulated means of maintaining societal
stability, a means inherently collective and
fundamentally legal.
45
The concept of self-preservation maintained its
importance among eighteenth century writers and
thinkers. Once again Charles Mullett has shown the
progress of such theory in his description of Benjamin
Hoadly's The Original and Institutional of Civil
Government in 1710 and Thomas Burnett's Essay
upon Government in 1726. Both authors, in good
Whig tradition, concluded that self-defense applied to
society as a whole, and that only in the last resort
could the right of self-preservation justify resistance
to government. The Radical Whigs, John Trenchard and
Thomas Gordon, in Cato's Letters, also
rationalize the use of force based on this right as an
ultimate remedy for abuse.
46
The most influential English writer to describe the
natural right of self-preservation, and the one to tie
it most convincingly to the body of English law and to
the concept of the right to keep arms was Sir William
Blackstone. Although his Commentaries on the Law of
page 242
England has its basis in a close analysis of common
and statutory law, judicial decisions, and other legal
commentaries, Blackstone prefaced his work with a
general essay on the origins of law and the rights of
individual. In this analysis he postulated the
existence of a number of absolute and a number of
auxiliary rights belonging to persons as human beings,
adapted from the continental school of natural law of
Pufendorf and especially Burlamaqui. The first of his
three "absolute rights of every Englishman . . .
usually called their liberties, as they are founded on
nature and reason" paralleled the concept of
self-preservation. However, this "right of personal
security," Blackstone wrote, "consists in a person's
legal and uninterrupted enjoyment of his life, his
limbs, his body, his health, and his reputation." a
much wider rendering than the European model. He did
accept the notion of self-defense against life and limb
as a fundamental right because "the law of England,"
not simply natural law, placed "such high value" on
their protection "that it pardons even homicide if
committed se defendendo, or in order to
preserve them." Contrary to the popular view of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, and in
divergence from the absolute character of this right
imposed by Hobbes and even Locke, Blackstone rejected
the extension of this right to include defense of
property or even the fear of bodily injury. "A fear of
battery or being beaten," he observed, "though never so
well grounded, is no duress; neither is the fear of
having one's house burned, or one's goods taken away
and destroyed." The reason was simple. Society
provided legal remedy. "In these cases," he concluded,
"should the threat be performed, a man may have
satisfaction by recovering equivalent damages,"
page 243
a different situation from the defense of life because
"no suitable atonement can be made for the loss of
life, or limb."
47
In addition to the two other absolute rights of liberty
and property, Blackstone enumerated five "auxiliary
subordinate rights" to protect the other. Here, the
means of self-defense come last and receive the
briefest mention, following those of parliament,
limitation or royal prerogative, judicial remedy, and
petitioning king and parliament for redress of
grievances. Only after these other means had failed
should Englishmen resort to the "fifth and last
auxiliary right," the right "of having arms for their
defence, suitable to their condition and degree, and
such as are allowed by law." The two qualifications
incorporated into the English Bill of Rights identified
the right, not as absolute, but as "a public allowance
under due restrictions, of the natural right of
resistance and self-preservation, when the sanctions of
society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the
violence of oppression." Like the other "liberties of
Englishmen," Blackstone recognized that this one was
"more generally talked of than thoroughly understood"
and sought to make them "perfectly known."
48
Arms, then in Blackstone's analysis, provided the
ultimate sanction of individuals in society to defend
that society against abuse of power by governing
officials. How they could be used effectively
presented a real problem. English law recognized the
king himself "as the generalissimo, or the first in
military command" because the "great end" of society
and government was to protect the "weakest of
individuals" by directing the "united strength of the
community." To create
page 244
"a distinct order of the profession of arms," he
warned, was "extremely dangerous" in "a land of
liberty." "No man should take up arms, but with a view
to defend his country and its laws," Blackstone
observed; "he puts not off the citizen when he enters
the camp; but it is because he is a citizen . . . that
he makes himself for a while a soldier." Thus, the
proper means of resisting oppression, either from
foreign invaders or fellow countrymen including,
presumably, the king himself, was for every citizen to
become a soldier to defend the law. Blackstone did
into explicitly argue that the "militia" should violate
statutory law and disobey the order of the king, the
commander in chief. But the inference is clear. If
the ultimate sanction of society is to preserve itself,
by arms if necessary, and if every man is properly a
soldier in times of need, and the proper institutional
structure for organizing these men into a military
force was the "militia," then the militia represented a
legitimate means of exercising societal sanctions.
49
Blackstone established the connection between the
natural right of self-preservation and the English
rights of self-defense and of keeping arms. Americans,
as will be shown in the next chapter, quickly adopted
his point of view and used the Commentaries as
the authority for military preparations against the
English army in Boston in 1768. Yet Blackstone had
more to say on the militia and the army, much of value
to the revolutionary "new militia" of the mid-1770s.
Blackstone observed that England had maintained no
permanently embodied military forces until the reign of
Henry VII. Before that, the English tradition had been
that of universal military obligation. The Saxons, for
example, had exercised the practice of having war
leaders "elected by the people
page 245
in their full assembly, or folkmote," so that if this
delegated power were abused, the people could just as
easily withdraw it from a guilty leader. In this way
the "Saxon constitution," like that of the "ancient
Germans," their ancestors, maintained "an independent
power over the military." By the time King Alfred
"first settled a national militia," making "all the
subjects of his dominion soldiers," the earls were no
longer elective and were too dangerously powerful. The
Norman Conquest introduced the feudal military system
which quickly degenerated into monetary commutation for
personal service. Partly to compensate for this
weakness, non-feudal service obligations were
reiterated through the Assize of Arms and Statue of
Winchester requiring men to keep weapons "according to
his estate and degree." Only with the repeal of these
and subsequent arming statues did Parliament challenge
the king's "power of the militia," the confrontation
which lead to civil war in 1642. Blackstone also
described the outline of military obligation under the
1660 and 1757 militia statues and the safeguards
imposed on the use of army by the annual Mutiny Acts
after 1690. What he did not emphasize was the
selective and limited nature of membership in the
militia, making it as a distinct institution of the
eighteenth century only a potential means for opposing
tyranny. Yet, as we have seem, the general and
indiscriminate usage of "militia," which Blackstone was
himself guilty of except in the final section if his
analysis, provided an ambiguous definition for
Americans.
50
English writers in 1760s and 1770s made little of the
distinction between self-defense and militia and
between militia and arms,
page 246
thus compounding the ambiguity. In 1763, for example,
Fenning's Royal English Dictionary defined
militia as "the standing force of a nation; the
inhabitants of a country trained to arms, and acting in
their own defence." In An Argument Concerning the
Militia, Sir George Savile criticized the reformed
institution but admitted that "in cases of necessity,
and where the very being of a constitution is at stake,
every state has an absolute and indefeasible right of
calling on every subject, capable of personal service,
to stand forth in defence of his country in its
distress." Anthony Ellys agreed and demonstrated in
Tracts on Liberty that under English law "no
force can be used but in execution of legal processes,
or for resistance of any sudden invasion. In any
other case, no great company of persons can appear in
arms, or in any forcible manner without a commission
from the crown." Parliament, he felt, had wisely
settled military prerogative in the king in 1661. Yet
the law "would have been null in itself" had it in fact
eliminated the means for "all persons to defend
themselves" when the king or his officers "should act
the most illegally, and endeavour to destroy the
constitution." Rather, the Militia Act had been
"designed to leave the subjects to their civil rights."
"Privileges," he concluded, "without a right of
defending them, are of very little significance."
Precisely this point was reinforced by Francis
Hutcheson and Joseph Priestley. Hutcheson argued that
in a state of "natural liberty" "none of our rights
could be safe, were we prohibited all violent efforts
against the injurious." Priestley looked at the
history of "hostile opposition to government" and
concluded that "without exception" "the people must
page 247
have been in the right" because of all the obvious
"difficulties, that lie in the way of procuring redress
of grievances by force of arms." Finally, James Burgh
contended in his 1774 Political Disquisitions
that "possessions of arms" in itself "is the
distinction between a freeman and a slave." A freeman
"ought to have arms to defend himself and what he
possesses, else he lives precariously . . . awed into
submission to every arbitrary command." Burgh did not
specify militia as a concomitant to arms keeping. But
he later emphasized that if the militia were the only
national military force, "if the people were armed and
the court unarmed," the people would less likely be
oppressed. In the words of Edward Montagu, "nothing
but a extensive Militia can revive the once martial
spirit of this nation, and we had even better once more
be a nation of soldiers, like or renown'd ancestors,
than a nation of abject crouching slaves."
51
Two final Scottish works established the context for
the American debate on arms and the militia. Though
neither John Millar's Origin of the Distinction of
Ranks, published in 1771, nor Adam Smith's
Wealth of Nations, appearing in 1776, had much
immediate influence on American revolutionaries, each
presented a sociological view of the evolution and
decline of the militia as an effective military
institution. With the transformation of the English
militia in 1757 and the loss of influence in England of
the ideas of the Commonwealthmen, works such as these
drove a deeper wedge between the English and American
concepts of militia and ultimately reinforced the
opinions of American military reformers such as George
Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and Henry Knox
page 248
that neither the old colonial militia nor the new
revolutionary militia was acceptable for the growth of
the new nation into political and economic maturity.
52
John Millar reviewed the evolution of military history
in relation to advances in government and society.
"Mankind, in a rude age," he observed, "are commonly in
readiness to go out to war." By constant engagements
men "are trained to the use of arms, . . . acquire
experience in the military art"; and, "without any
trouble or expense, a powerful militia is instantly
maintained." In a more developed society when
government "acquires so much authority as to protect
individuals from opposition" and to end private wars,
people lose "their martial ardour." Finally, advances
in art and manufacturers, especially the introduction
of luxury, created self-interest opposed to military
exertion and "the bulk of a people become at length
unable or unwilling to serve in war," and when called
upon, hire substitutes, thus creating an army of men
whose self-interest lies in the money they receive for
their service. Thus, Millar noted, "the introduction
of mercenary forces is soon followed by that of a
regular standing army," in which "the business of a
soldier becomes a distinct profession." Rather than
criticizing this development, he simply observed that
it had occurred "in all the civilized and opulent
nations of antiquity," as well as in modern Europe.
Though such armies had often been "the great engine of
tyranny and oppression," they had also produced "a
tendency to inspire the people with notions of liberty
and independence." Therefore the "total revolution in
the manner of conducting their military operations"
page 249
which "the influence of civilization" had had "upon the
temper and disposition of a people" could not be
considered totally negative.
53
Adam Smith, whole lectures in the 1760s at the
University of Glasgow provided the basis for his
Wealth of Nations, echoed many of Millar's
sentiments. Using a functional analysis of warfare in
agricultural and manufacturing nations, he describe the
distinction arising from increasing societal
development. In simpler societies every man was a
soldier, fighting without pay and without loss of
livelihood from his farm. In more complex societies,
men who serve in wars lost income by being away from
their trades; consequently, few men could be sent to
war without national economic ruin. Therefore,
division of labor required the creation of "a
particular class of citizens" to make warfare their
"principal profession." To require everyone to undergo
military training, Smith observed, "would not promote
their own interest" because of the expense in time, and
it would only create an "imperfect military force."
Since "the natural habits of the people render them
incapable of defending themselves" without pay or
public coercion, the resulting institution invariably
displayed its amateurishness in peace and war because
"the character of the labourer, artificer, or
tradesman, predominates over that of the soldier,"
Professional armies always fought more effectively and,
properly composed, did not endanger but protected
public liberty.
54
Smith's analysis differed from previous argument
concerning armies by its non-ideological approach.
Whereas the Commonwealthmen contended that virtue
supplied one universal animating force for military and
political action, and that it was everyone's "interest"
to defend
page 250
self and society, Smith argued that citizens would
fight only for economic self-interest, only if they
received positive economic incentive from the state.
In manufacturing nations, he observed, economic gain
displaced republican sacrifice as a primary motivating
force. On another level, he agreed that the two
interests might merge, admitting that defense depended
a great deal "upon the martial spirit of the great body
of the people" and that if "every citizen had the
spirit of a soldier" a large standing army would be
unnecessary. In fact, the ideal composition of his
army bore remarkable resemblance to the ideal militia
of the republicans. Both must consist of citizens,
commanded at the top by the king and immediately by the
"principle nobility and entry of the country," that is,
by those "who have the greatest interest in the support
of the civil authority." The difference lay in the
smaller number of men Smith advocated. Thus, advocates
of the traditional universal militia, of the modern
reformed militia, and of the volunteer army could look
to the Wealth of Nations for arguments to
support their own claims. The importance for the
revolutionary debate in America was the existence of a
strain of thought which separated arms-bearing from the
institution of militia.
55
Thus the ideological and philosophical context within
which the American revolutionaries created their "new
militia" and the right to bear arms contained elements
which supported both old and new institutional and
constitutional practices. The concepts of militia,
arms, standing armies both properly and improperly
composed, self-defense, self-preservation, and armed
resistance against oppressive government permeated the
large body of writings available to eighteenth-century
page 251
Americans. The Country image of militia and army
identified the "new militia" as the proper agency for
expressing Patriot military resistance. The natural
right philosophy gave Patriots the immediate
justification for such resistance. For some Americans,
the sociological economic analysis of the disadvantages
of all militia provided arguments for relying on an
American regular army despite the ideological bias
against one. Finally, the ambiguity of all the
received definitions of militia and arms provided
advocates of every variety of American state and
national militia and armies legitimate theoretical
support for adopting the systems after 1776.
[RESOURCES].
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