In such circumstances, where the slightest false step might have imperilled the very existence of the Army, the administration of the forces and the recommendation of their cost to the House of Commons became matters of extreme delicacy. It has already been told how the King, as the alarm of the first Jacobite rebellion subsided, voluntarily reduced the Army by ten thousand men at a stroke. Such policy, dangerous though it was from a military standpoint, was undoubtedly wise; it was the sacrifice of half the cargo to save the ship, an ingenious transformation of a necessity into a virtue. Even before the Spanish War was ended but fourteen thousand men were asked for as the British establishment, the remainder of the Army being hidden away in Ireland; and the same number was presented on the estimates up to the year 1722. In the autumn of that year, however, the administration insisted that the number should be raised to eighteen thousand. The spirits of the Jacobites had been raised by the birth of Prince Charles Edward; there had been general uneasiness in the country; troops had been encamped ready for service all the summer, and six regiments had been brought over from Ireland. The augmentation was bitterly opposed in Parliament, but was carried in the Commons by a large majority, and was judiciously executed, not by the formation of new regiments but by raising the strength of existing corps to a respectable figure.[19] Until this increase was made, said Lord Townsend in the House of Lords in the following year, it was impossible to collect four thousand men without leaving the King, the capital, and the fortified places defenceless.[20]