The Glorious Revolution is invoked in the Federalist argument as the decisive English precedent for regulating peacetime military power without disabling government. Its constitutional lesson is not that armies must never exist, but that the executive must not keep them on foot by its own authority: Parliament’s consent is the safeguard, leaving room for troops required by national needs.

Background and constitutional setting

The account places the Revolution within a long struggle over royal prerogative. For a considerable period after the Norman Conquest, the monarch’s authority in England was nearly unlimited. Barons and, later, the people gradually encroached on that prerogative in favor of liberty, but the essay identifies the Revolution of 1688 as the point at which English liberty became fully triumphant.

The immediate constitutional issue was the crown’s acknowledged prerogative to make war. Because that power was undefined, Charles II had used his own authority to maintain 5,000 regular troops in peacetime. James II increased the force to 30,000, paying for it from his civil list. The contrast between those figures makes the perceived danger concrete: an executive power exercised without a legislative check could sustain a substantial standing force even in peace.

The settlement on standing armies

Following the Revolution, the English Bill of Rights addressed that danger by declaring that raising or keeping a standing army in the kingdom during peacetime, unless with Parliament’s consent, was against law. The restriction targeted the authority by which an army could be maintained, not the existence of military forces under all circumstances.

The essay stresses the limits as well as the force of this safeguard. At the high point of English liberty, no further restraint on standing armies was considered necessary beyond preventing the executive magistrate from raising or keeping them through unilateral authority. The settlement did not place an absolute numerical ceiling on troops or disable legislative judgment.

The precedent’s reasoning and later use

The Revolution’s defenders are described as temperate and well-informed in their approach to the problem. They recognized that guards and garrisons required some troops, that national emergencies could not be bounded in advance by a precise rule, and that the government therefore needed a power capable of meeting every possible contingency. Entrusting that power to the legislature’s judgment was presented as the furthest precaution consistent with community safety.

The argument uses this English history to explain American suspicion of peacetime standing armies: the inhabitants of the States inherited an impression of danger from the country from which most had sprung, and the Revolution intensified their concern for popular rights. But it also draws a distinction between the English settlement and restrictions proposed in some State constitutions. In England, checking the crown answered a real question about where military authority lay; where a State legislature alone possessed the power to raise armies, declaring that armies could not be raised without legislative consent added no effective safeguard. The Glorious Revolution thus functions as an argument for accountable military authority, not for making government incapable of defending the community.