BOOK V OF LEGISLATIVE AND EXECUTIVE POWER CHAP. XIX. OF MILITARY ESTABLISHMENTS AND TREATIES A country may look for its defense either to a standing army, or an universal militia. - The former condemned. - The latter objected to, as of pernicious tendency - as unnecessary - either in respect to courage - or discipline. - Of a commander. - Of treaties. - Conclusion. THE last topic which it may be necessary to examine, as to the subject of war, is the conduct it becomes us to observe respecting it, in a time of peace. This article may be distributed into two heads, military establishments, and treaties of alliance. If military establishments in time of peace be judged proper, their purpose may be effected either by consigning the practice of military discipline to a certain part of the community, or by making every man, whose age is suitable for that purpose, a soldier. The preferableness of the...
Note: Godwin wrote this piece, according to a note in the manuscript, "while the Enquirer was in the press, under the impression that the favor of the public might have demanded another volume." The study of history may well be ranked among those pursuits which are most worthy to be chosen by a rational being. The study of history divides itself into two principal branches; the study of mankind in a mass, of the progress the fluctuations, the interests and the vises of society; and the study of the individual. The history of a nation might be written in the first of these senses, entirely in terms of abstraction, and without descending so much as to name one of those individuals to which the nation is composed. It is curious, and it is impo... (From : Anarchy Archives.)