Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/59

 ENGLISH WAK ADMINISTRATION. 15 sanction, they were sound beyoud dispute, chap. Ambiguous language was rife. People — some ' of them speaking in one sense, and some in another — could always concur in forms of speech which allowed the right of the Crown to command and administer such armed forces as Parliament might choose to piovide ; but this formidable power — this power by which all other powers might be trampled down into nothingness — was it one that could really be exercised after the manner of autocrats, by the king himself acting in person, by some son, some brother, some cousin, some spouse, some favourite of the sovereign ? Or, was it not rather a part of that State authority which appertains indeed to the Crown, yet must only be exerted through Ministers, through advisers responsible to Parliament ? To concede the first alternative fully would have been to surrender in terms the very kernel of English freedom ; but, until recent times, the nation did not prove so clear-seeing as to know what the principle was which — against the stress of mere law — it ou;4lit to enforce upon the Crown. Down to even a period so late as from the spring of 1870 to 1872, the part of our constitutional polity which applies to this deli- cate subject was only forming, not formed.('^) Our ancestors had been always alive to the danger of allowing an army to remain continu- ously under the personal direction of a sov- ereign ; and in old times — not having then found any better or less trenchant security