English Bill of Rights

The English Bill of Rights is invoked as a constitutional precedent for checking executive military power without disabling the legislature. In the Federalist argument, its peacetime standing-army provision arose from the history of monarchical authority in England; its significance lies not in an absolute prohibition on troops, but in requiring Parliament’s consent for them.

Historical Background

The argument traces English liberty through a gradual curtailment of royal prerogative. Following the Norman Conquest, the monarch’s authority was described as nearly unlimited; barons and, later, the people steadily reduced its most formidable claims. The decisive turn came with the revolution of 1688, which placed the Prince of Orange on the throne of Great Britain and, in the essay’s account, completed the triumph of English liberty.

The standing-army provision answered a particular danger within that history. Because the Crown possessed an acknowledged prerogative to make war, Charles II had kept 5,000 regular troops in peacetime on his own authority. James II increased that force to 30,000, also paid from his civil list. Against this background, the Bill of Rights made parliamentary consent the constitutional condition for maintaining a peacetime army.

The Provision and Its Scope

The essay quotes the rule as follows: “the raising or keeping a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace, UNLESS WITH THE CONSENT OF PARLIAMENT, was against law.” The qualification is essential: the measure did not declare that troops could never be kept during peace. It denied the executive magistrate the right to raise or retain them by mere executive authority, while leaving consent to Parliament.

The author presents this arrangement as a deliberately limited safeguard. Even when English liberty was at its height, the patriots who brought about the revolution did not impose a separate restraint on legislative discretion. They recognized that guards and garrisons could be necessary, that national emergencies could not be bounded in advance by a precise rule, and that authority adequate to meet contingencies had to reside somewhere in government. Entrusting that judgment to the legislature was, in their view, the furthest precaution compatible with public safety.

Use in the Argument About Military Power

The precedent serves to explain an inherited American suspicion of peacetime standing armies. The essays attribute that concern partly to habits of political thought carried over from England and intensified by revolution. They also warn that distrust of an hereditary monarch could be extended too far if it became distrust of the people’s representatives in their legislative assemblies.

This distinction shapes the argument about constitutional design: a restriction directed against unilateral executive power is not the same as a rule disabling the legislature from authorizing military establishments when circumstances require them. The English example is thus presented not as an argument against all peacetime troops, but as a way to locate the power to authorize them within representative government.

Constitutional Significance

The Bill of Rights functions as both a historical warning and a model of institutional allocation. The figures of 5,000 and 30,000 troops show the increase in royal military power that precedes the provision; the requirement of parliamentary consent marks the response. In the essays’ reasoning, the precedent supports legislative responsibility for judging national exigencies while guarding against an executive’s unilateral control of a peacetime force.

Its logic also clarifies the limits of the analogy. The point is not that every government should copy every English constitutional rule, but that a safeguard should address the source of the danger it was designed to meet. Where the English provision checked a Crown capable of maintaining troops on its own authority, its rationale did not automatically justify restraining legislatures that themselves held the authority to raise armies. The Bill of Rights therefore anchors a broader distinction between protecting liberty and needlessly depriving government of the means to protect the community.