3. Beyond even these considerations of economy and advantage I put the transcendent, priceless benefit of Disarmament in the _assurance of peace_. Disarmament substitutes the constable for the soldier, and reduces the Standing Army to a police. The argument assumes, first, the needlessness of a Standing Army, and, secondly, its evil influence. Both of these points were touched at an early day by the wise Chancellor of England, Sir Thomas More, when, in his practical and personal Introduction to "Utopia," he alludes to what he calls the "bad custom" of keeping many servants, and then says: "In France there is yet a more pestiferous sort of people; for the whole country is full of soldiers, that are still kept up in time of peace,--if such a state of a nation can be called a peace." Then, proceeding with his judgment, the Chancellor holds up what he calls those "pretended statesmen" whose maxim is that "it is necessary for the public safety to have a good body of veteran soldiers ever in readiness." And after saying that these pretended statesmen "sometimes seek occasion for making war, that they may train up their soldiers in the art of cutting throats," he adds, in words soon to be tested, "But France has learned, to its cost, how dangerous it is to feed such beasts." [Footnote: Utopia, tr. Burnet, (London, 1845,) Book I. pp. 29, 30.] It will be well, if France has learned this important lesson. The time has come to practise it. All history is a vain word, and all experience is at fault, if large War Preparations, of which the Standing Army is the type, have not been constant provocatives of war. Pretended protectors against war, they have been real instigators to war. They have excited the evil against which they were to guard. The habit of wearing arms in private life exercised a kindred influence. So long as this habit continued, society was darkened by personal combat, street-fight, duel, and assassination. The Standing Army is to the nation what the sword was to the modern gentleman, the stiletto to the Italian, the knife to the Spaniard, the pistol to our slave-master,--furnishing, like these, the means of death; and its possessor is not slow to use it. In stating the operation of this system we are not left to inference. As France, according to Sir Thomas More, shows "how dangerous it is to feed such beasts," so does Prussia, in ever-memorable instance, which speaks now with more than ordinary authority, show precisely how the Standing Army may become the incentive to war. Frederick, the warrior king, is our witness. With honesty or impudence beyond parallel, he did not hesitate to record in his Memoirs, among the reasons for his war upon Maria Theresa, that, on coming to the throne, he found himself with "troops always ready to act." Voltaire, when called to revise the royal memoirs, erased this confession, but preserved a copy;[Footnote: Brougham, Lives of Men of Letters, (London and Glasgow, 1856,) p. 59,--_Voltaire_.