Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/446

 402 APPENDIX. The Nature of the Oonstitviional Danger, and also respectimj the Horse Guards be/ore 1778. Of course, after entering overtly ipon a treasonable project, the ' personal king ' would have been unmasked, and become dis- tinctly a criminal ; but the dangerous power loft to him was such that, up to the moment of determinin;) to move troops guilti/y, he would be secure in his apparent legality, yet have the cavalry and the infantry of the country in liand, and not only ready to strike, but animated by a sincere belief that in so striking they would be obeying their ti'ue and lawful master. How such a power could be used criminally Louis Napoleon showed by his Coup d'Etat of December 1851. George III., as we saw, used to speak of the time of the first Duke of Cumberland (Captain-General in 1744) as the one from which might be dated the claim of our latter-day kings to make their control over the army a right of the ' personal ' sovereign as distinguished from the right of the ' State ; ' but it was at a later pei'iod that this control began to be exercised through the instru- mentality of a ' General on the StatY Commanding in Chief ' at the Horse Guards. From the reign of Charles II. downwards, there had been either ' Captains-Cieneral ' or ' Commanders-in-Chief ; ' but — appointed in 1778 — Lord Amherst, it seems, was the first who (commanding in chief ' on the staff at headquarters '), held an ofiice the same as the one which was filled from 1856 till long afterwards by the present Duke of Cambridge, and is still indeed extant under the immediate chiefship of His Royal Highness, though now annexed to the War Office, and subordinated to the Secretary of State.* Before the reign of Lord Amherst, the office we call the Horse Guards did not, as afterwards, comprise any general commanding in chief on its staff, and used to consist of two departments — viz., that of the Adjutant-General, and that of the Quartermaster- General. To either of these departments the king, it seems, if he chose, could send an order straight from the palace, and — apparently apprehending the danger to liberty that might result from such a power if left unfettered — our statesmen, in their usual odd way, endeavoured to take back from the king what he seemed at first sight to possess as matter of right ; for providing that no movement of troojis should take place, except under the orders of the Quartermaster-General, they also provided that any orders he gave should lie based upon papers called ' the Routes ' (pronounced always ' Routs ') which were to be furnished by tiie me7it becomes in this later time the War Office. The old War Office, upon becoming annexed to the War Department, gave its name to t!ie united cstablisliment.
 * It may be observed that what in the text is called the War Depart-